I have been racking my brain to think of why Iemma is so hated. Your charting with 13 points brings back some of the last 4 years happenings. Here are my comments on them and I freely state that I have voted Labor about 70% of my life

Points 1-4 are hardly points against the government. In the case of the whistle-blowing nurses the charges were rejected by ICAC and one of the nurses now looks distinctly like a liberal stooge.
5 Was admittedly a low point but ICAC again cleared the government
6-10 Seem to be either neutral or fairly balanced low points between the government and opposition
11 I may be an old Keynsian but I believe deficit budgets are beneficial during periods of downturn, particularly when the state is virtually debt free
12 Scully certainly deserved to go but I felt it was handled quickly and efficiently.
13 I don’t know if a Minister’s sexual percadillos can be blamed on the government but once again I felt the reaction was handled well and Debnam handed the government an own goal.

I can also think of the changes to the train timetables, which have now settled down, and the failure of the PPP Cross City tunnel as negative points since 2003 but I know there must be others.

For my benefit I would really like blackburnpseph and others to tell me of the government’s specific failures that have caused such a negative reaction. (I mean, even if you don’t like the government, there is no reason to act as if its the end of civilisation if they get re-elected.)

This is somthing that was clearly missing froim the Nopvember 2006 Victorian State Electon

Had the VEC reconciled the electronic record of ballotpapers
with the total number of ballot-papers received the number of significant erros in the conduct of the election count would not have occured.

The total number of ballot papers recored in the final count has upto 470 ballot papers missing from the previous count.

There is little to wonder as to why the VEC does not want to publish the polling place details of the 2006 Legislative Council results.

Hopefully these errors in adminsitration will not occur in the NSW count and that copies of preference data-files and polling place results are readily available prior to the declartion of the poll.

Reports coming in from scrutineers and candidates indicates that the Victorian Electoral Commission is once again proposing to use a computerised counting system for the Mooney Valley City Council By-election scheduled to be counted this weekend.

Under dispute is the need to conduct a computerised count for the election of a single member when a manual count would be quicker and require less resources and more important would be more open and transparent.

The use of a computerised count in a single member constituency can not be justified. The time and resources required to undertake a computerised count is much more then it would be if the election was manually counted. Any time saved is only at the expense the public scrutiny by cutting corners reducing the overall quality of the count.

Computerised counting was not used to count the results of the Victorian Legislative Assembly (Lower-house) election in November.

The Victorian Electoral Commissions conduct of the Victorian Legislative Council (Upper-house) election in November 2006 demonstrates that VEC’s computerised counting system has some major problems. Information obtained under FOI indicates that the software used by the Victorian Electoral Commission has not been fully certified and that there is insufficient checks and balances in the system to ensure that the results of the computerised count are accurate and correct.

The Victorian Local Government Act Schedule 3, Part 3 subclause 10 (c) (ii) requires that the VEC undertake a preliminary sort of ballot papers into parcels based on the allocated first preference vote.

The VEC claim that they are exempt from this provision of the act where the election is conducted by post and a computerised counting system is used.

The election is expected to take 24 data-entry operators two hours to count., That’s 48 man hours.

A manual count would take four people approximately 4-5 hours to count a net savings of 28 man hours. So where is the benefit of a computerised count, and at what costs? A computerised count is virtually impossible to effectively scrutinise.

The tally of the 2006 Victorian Legislative Council also required that the Victorian Electoral Commission presort ballot papers into parcels based on the first preference allocation.

This is an important part of the scrutiny of the ballot. Without this provision scrutineers are limited in their ability to undertake a proper scrutiny of the counting of the election. Ballot paper preferences are keyed in a random fashion and scrutineers are unable to focus on a particular candidates preferences.

The VEC electronic shell game

There is further concern that the Electoral Commission refuses to provide copies of the recorded preference data file for independent analysis and review, further denying the opportunities and ability to undertake a proper scrutiny of the count.

This is akin to the con-mans game of three shells and a pea where the returning officer declares the results of the game by lifting up one shell showing that the pea is not there but refuses to show what’s underneath the other two shells.

Use of computerised counting of single member constituencies should be prevented until such time as full and comprehensive review of the electronic voting systems has been undertaken,

A Manual count would facilitate an open and transparent scrutiny of the ballot and would be preferable then the proposed computerised count,

The Victorian Electoral Commission is more interested in playing with its latest toy then it is about public accountability and the maintenance of open and transparent electoral system.

Given the experience of recent past events the VEC management of the electronic count can not be trusted.

The fact that the VEC is prepared to misrepresent the facts in respect to the legislative requirements in order to cut corners is further evidence for a major review of the functions and operation of the Victorian Electoral Commission.

In some ways, it is tragic for Australian democracy that a state government that has so manifestly failed to deliver basic services and has become besmirched in a series of ethical scandals should seem to be comfortably cruising back into office because the opposition is just not a credible alternative and doesn’t even seem to want to win.

Unless, of course, a re elected Iemma government would be so diabolically incompetent (on past record -yep!) that the libs see a reaction against it as shoring up the NSW vote when the federal election comes. Or that they realise that a Debnam government would be as diabolically awful and deliver the Lodge to Ruddy who would have gained a swag of NSW seats.

Call me cynical…..