Revealed: Tasmanian election's surprising informal vote trend

With the August 2 deadline looming, Tasmanian electoral staff face a complex final count. Inside the record number of pre-polls and the postal vote scrutiny system >>

Jo Richardson and Danielle Sproule counting votes at the TEC. Picture: Linda Higginson

Tasmanian Electoral Commission staffers are ploughing on to the final state election count deadline of August 2, with preliminary results showing a marked drop in informal votes across all divisions.

Staffers completed counting the rest of the home division votes from the record 132,493 pre-polls on Sunday before ticking off the telephone votes on Monday, but Tuesday was set aside for rechecking votes from all polling places as well as the collating of votes outside of their divisions.

Electoral commissioner Andrew Hawkey at the TEC counting of the ballots. Picture: Linda Higginson

Tasmanian Electoral Commissioner Andrew Hawkey said new numbers would be released on Wednesday when the commission would return to counting new vote numbers.

“That’ll be tomorrow when we have out-of-division pre-polled – there are 17,000 of those and a lot, around 8000, in Lyons because people didn’t vote in Launceston or Glenorchy,” he said.

“The last thing we’ll have is the postal, that’ll be done hopefully tomorrow.

“The reason why that was held off is the legislation now says, anyone who has voted any other way cannot have their postal vote counted, so we have to check that and thankfully we have electronic rolls.

“There’s 1100 of those, all have to come back centrally, be uploaded into a consolidated list, checked against the postal, then with that postal vote, identify who’s already voted against the system and pull out their postal before we then do the other processes.

The TEC counting of the ballots on Tuesday 22nd July 2025. Picture: Linda Higginson

“We had 22 cases where people had voted in other ways as opposed to at the Legislative Council earlier this year.

“I’m expecting there will be maybe 100 or more at this election, which is why it’s a good process to do.”

Among the votes already counted, Mr Hawkey said there has been a drop in informal votes across all five of the state’s divisions, averaging to around a 0.5 per cent drop in each division.

“Informal votes have dropped, now it’s under four per cent for Clark,” he said.

“The highest informal votes are still occurring in Lyons, but the division still saw a 0.5 per cent drop.

The TEC counting of the ballots on Tuesday 22nd July 2025. Picture: Linda Higginson

“The phone voting has a really small informal vote due to the system of having to manually ask where people want to number what candidate.”

Mr Hawkey said a number of internal reviews and changes had been postponed due to the frequent elections in Tasmania, including a review of informal voting in Tasmania and implementing electronic data entry of the House of Assembly elections results.

Originally published as Revealed: Tasmanian election's surprising informal vote trend