Activity at this site will be pretty light in the coming month or so, as I will be hard at work on my guide to the March 24 New South Wales election (among other things). I will at some point knock together a preview of the by-election to be held for the Western Australian state seat of Peel on February 3. For those seeking an overview of the recent Victorian election, you could do a lot worse than this effort by Nick Economou of Monash University, brought to you by the good people at Democratic Audit.
I think the point that StephenL was quite clearly making was that while there may indeed be problems with the conduct of the election under Tully & VEC, there are equally problems with the AEC.
I should add that my experience in WA & NSW is that: the WAEC is very competent, willing to assist and available to help; and so are the WA AEC officials. NSW has a badly under-funded SEO (now NSWEC) with a new Commissioner who is busy being as officious as possible in reinterpreting the Act, while the AEC has generally been helpful, if not at all times available. The problems StephenL describes I don’t have firsthand knowledge of, but interestingly they sound alarmingly similar to problems identified with the SEO in NSW after both the state and local elections (there are were a wide variety of submissions into the SEO’s conduct after these elections that identified those issues).
And just because Stephen is a member of the Greens is not important here, excepting that it gives him a perspective on the conduct of elections over an extensive period of time, just like MelbCity.
NSW Chief electorate Officer is the guy that preceded Steve Tully in Victoria. His reputation of being open and transparent, whilst not as bad as Steve Tully, is not that good. In all my dealings with the AEC I have found that they are committed to ensuring that the elkections process is open and transparent. information has readily been available and I have never heard of them making the same sort of mistakes that Tully made. In fact I have never heard of any election not checking that they have the accounted for all the votes recorded. With the increase use of computerises electronic counting of votes it if more important then ever that information is made available if public confidence is to be maintained in the conduct of public elections.
Steve Tully’s refusal to date to provide detailed results of the election counts is inexcusable. we still have not received a response to our FOI request. teh fact that we have been forced ionto having to make an FOI request to obtain this information is an abuse of process by Steve Tully and the VEC. We are committed to ensuring that Steve Tully will be held to account and that6 this information,( Which has previously been available) is published and available for public review. Steve Tully’s actions continue to bring the vic and Victoria into disrepute.
Under the FOI legislation Tully has 45 days to respond to the FOI application, We have already arranged for legal representation and will once again go back to court to ensure that this information is published. We will be seeking costs this time (The City of Melbourne spent over $60,000.00 trying to avoid the release to the detailed results of their elections. We have already contacted senior members of the Liberal party and the ALP all who have expressed their ongoing concern also.
Steve Tully’s career has certainly taken a dive and the longer he continues down this obstructionist path his career may very well be coming to a short end. Electoral Commissioners are pretty well protected and more often then not they are never held to account for their miss-management but this may be the exception.
Again I am of the veiw that Australia would be better served with a single independent professional Electoral Authority.
Memo all: the state election is over, and I for one have heard enough about the crimes of the VEC. MelbCity, I think you are hyperventilating over minor matters. We should keep these things in perspective. There are many countries where vote counting takes weeks, where ballots are lost, stolen, burnt, forged, and where people are shot at while trying to vote. I am currently in a country where the elected government has been deposed by the army, and where political matters are debated with bombs. Has a single result been changed, has anyone been deprived of their vote, by the alleged misdeeds of the VEC? No.
William, could we have a thread dedicated to idle speculation about the federal election, as you have done for the NSW election?
Adams if y9ou do not address the issues when they arose the problems will return again and again. This is an issue that has been around for over 10years and it is about time something is done. The main problem is that many people just find a new game and forget the problems that exist before. This issue will not go away. It has been over a month and the VEC has still not responded to the FOI application. They have two more weeks. We have already sort legal representation and will pursue this issue in the courts and also within the Parliament. you either support open and transparent elections or you don’t. Your a player in the political process what steps, if any, have you taken to ensure that teh results anof teh election are open and transparent. How do you justify teh msitakles made by the VEC? Oh that was last years election lets move on. What BS.