Comments on: Morgan: 58.5-41.5

By: Chris Curtis

Chris Curtis — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:16:02 +0000

Thanks, William, but now that the spam has been deleted, I’d like to make it clear I was not referring to J’s post.

By: diznloz

diznloz — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:43:05 +0000

By: Chris Curtis

Chris Curtis — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:01:51 +0000

Spam.

By: Chris Curtis

Chris Curtis — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:01:32 +0000

William,

Time to update the sapm filter.

By: J

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:52:00 +0000

Hey folks – a few people on here mentioned that they were going to have copies of all stations’ election coverage – ABC, 7, 9 and 10 – on DVD. Anyone out there have copies they’re willing to make available?

Cheers!

By: Adrian

Adrian — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 01:40:18 +0000

Re Antony @1012
Always good to get figures right! My 5% estimate was based on SA averages and the Vic figures for below line votes are only about 1% as you correctly note. Also ALP fraction of Senate has now started increasing after dropping for most of count so its now about 7000 over quota. And the Greens below line votes for their first candidate and Feeney below line votes dont move. And the ALP will get its share of leakages from groups favouring Greens above line. Greens are long odds against a Vic Senate seat on current trends.

By: Lefty E

Lefty E — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:00:33 +0000

70% rise in natural disasters since 2004. The seas are warming.

The US, Canada, and Japan: the future sits in judgement.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/13/2117667.htm

By: deqcoz

deqcoz — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:53:41 +0000

By: grace pettigrew

grace pettigrew — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:50:00 +0000

Er, don’t know what “rold rules” are, I mean “old rules”.

By: grace pettigrew

grace pettigrew — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:15:52 +0000

Adrian at 940, you said” “A question for Antony or anyone else. There seem to be a lot of provisional/absent/postal/prepoll votes being excluded. I counted roughly 27,000 or 2.7% of the total vote, and probably about 13.5% of the provisional/absent/postal/prepoll votes, attempted for SA seats. (This is on top of the roughly 4% informals). Apart from not being on roll, what else causes this. Is there any breakdown of the causes for exclusion. How does it compare to previous elections. Nationally then we have 500,000 plus informals, probably 400,000 plus excluded and plenty more who never got on the roll. Surely we could do better than this?”

You may not be aware, as many are not, that in its unpredendented assault on the integrity of the electoral system, and with a compliant Senate, the Howard Government changed the Electoral Act in a number of major and minor ways, in order to suppress the votes of anyone who might vote for the then oppostion.

These included abolishing the seven day grace period after the announcement of an election for new and amending enrolments (expected to impact most on young voters, but countered by a strong enrolment drive by the AEC and GetUp amongst others), disenfranchising prisoners (overturned by the High Court), and changing the rules on provisional votes (not noticed by many because its so arcane).

The changes to the provisional voting rules are complex and I am not completely across them, so please correct me anyone who understands them better, but I understand they include requiring provisional voters to show idendification at the polling booth (and many provisional voters, the homeless and aboriginals, do not carry ID around with them), and disallowing provisional votes cast in the same division (where previously a simple change of address within a division would have been allowed).

Under the rold rules, anyone removed from the roll, during the AEC’s roll cleansing drive prior to the election, for not living at their enrolled address, would have been able to cast a provisional vote and had it counted, if they had only moved to another address within the same division (on the principle that the direction of their vote would not have been different given the same field of candidates).

I understand that the number of provisional votes allowed through to the count has decreased markedly at this election, so perhaps the reason lies somewhere in the changes to the rules made by the Howard Government in order to “tighten up” the provisional voting system, and thereby rig the system further in their favour (on the assumption that these voters are more likely to vote left).

We can only hope that these legislative amendments will be removed by the new Rudd Government and the fairness of our electoral system restored.