Month: October 2000

Next Saturday, voters will be armed with Act Electoral Commission advice that they must mark preferences for at least the number of seats (five or seven) that there are in their electorate. After that you can mark as many or as few as you want.

This week’s Canberra-Times-Datacol polling indicates that it is critical for voters to number right through to the end. It is quite likely that the last two seats will be determined by preferences expressed well down from the first five or seven and that many votes of those who restrict themselves to the minimum number of preferences will exhaust and they will lose the right to have a say in which minor party or independent will get the last seat.

An ACT Hare-Clark election is a very different beast from a Federal House of Representatives election. In the House of Representatives election the way the preferences or the minor parties are distributed to the major parties is critical. And preferences from the major parties to the minor parties do not matter a toss because the two major party candidates are in almost all cases the last two standing in the count and so their preferences never get distributed.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_forum voting patters”

Dave Rugendyke did the decent thing, up to a point. Last Friday week he warned Chief Minister Kate Carnell that he would vote against her in any no-confidence on Bruce Stadium.

He could have done what he did in the no-confidence motion 15 months ago. He could have kept his view to himself until it came time to vote. Instead, he was upfront immediately. But he also gave Carnell and the Liberals more than a week’s warning.

And as the cliché goes, a week is a long time in politics.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_fixed terms and poll”

Counting was much slower than hoped last night.

The electronic vote was not as early as hoped, nor was there enough of it to make solid predictions.

Only the pre-poll electronic vote was posted early. The electronic vote on the day was posted much later.

And just before 10pm the Electoral Commission’s website crashed, but an intranet site was still available at the tally room.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_electronic vote”

This week to matters electoral. Peter Andren the lone Independent in the House of Representatives put forward some ideas for change federally. The ACT’s Electoral Commissioner, Phillip Green, canvassed the prospects of internet voting. And speculation is rife about the position in the ACT. Political scientist Malcolm Mackerras points out that an election would clear the air by the system does not permit it, and what would happen if Kate Carnell left the Assembly.

First to Andren. Andren is one of only a handful of people since World War II to be elected as an independent to the House of Representatives – as distinct from major-party candidates deserting.

In a speech in Canberra this week he called for a system of proportional representation in the House of Representatives. The quick response would be: “”Tell ‘im he’s dreamin’.” True, the major parties are never going to agree to it, but they may be forced to in the longer term. Andren points to a steady disillusionment with major-party politics. Last election 20 per cent of voters gave their vote to independents and minor parties (treating the Coalition as one). Andren was the only one elected. He is just 1.5 per cent of the total membership of the House of Representatives. Something wrong here. One Nation got 8.4 per cent of the vote and no seats. In 1990 the Democrats got 11.3 per cent of the vote and no seats.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_electoral”

The ACT Electoral Act (Section 100) requires that the election be held on the third Saturday in October, 2001. If you have the numbers it would be a simple matter to change the section.

But that would fly in the face of ACT constitutional history. The fixed term was part of a package of Federal legislation that set out the system of government. There would be no Governor or Administrator. Rather it would be a self-executing system. The people would elect the MLAs and the MLAs would elect the Chief Minister who would then choose the ministers. There would be no Administrator to “”call upon” someone to form a Government or to accept advice to “”call” an election.

The Electoral Act was patriated to the ACT in 1992 so the Legislative Assembly had power over electoral matters. The idea was that the ACT could set up its own electoral commission and the like, not so that it could fiddle with fundamentals.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_early poll”

The poll showed also that Jon Stanhope was preferred as Chief Minister over both Kate Carnell and Gary Humphries.

The poll was taken as the Liberal Party, Osborne independents and Michael Moore were looking at the option of having an early election to resolve the matter. The ACT usually has a fixed term with the next election due on the third Saturday in October next year. It would require a change in the Electoral Act to have an early election. That would require nine MLAs to agree.

Should an election be called it is likely to be held on either Saturday December 2nd or 9th.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_datacolumnl poll”

The Canberra Times Datacol polls taken over the past two weeks picked the major shift in this election.

Three weeks ago most people would have thought that Independents Dave Rugendyke and Paul Osborne were a shoe in and that the Democrats would shoot themselves in the foot again.

Datacol said that the Democrats were polling solidly and that the two conservative independents were in trouble.

Datacol also picked the shift of vote from the Liberal Party to Labor and that the Liberals were doing better in Molonglo than the other electorates.

In every election since self-government Datacol has predicted the major shifts, often against popular belief. In 1989 and 1992 that the majors were polling disastrously, in 1995 that the Liberals could win in this largely Labor town and again in 1998 and this time that the cross-bench had moved to the left.

The party complexion of four seats still remains doubtful after counting in Saturday’s ACT election.

In Molonglo, Labor has three, the Liberals two and the Greens one. The remaining seat is a fight between the Democrats’ Jane Errey and the Liberals’ Helen Cross, with the Democrats’ favoured.

In Brindabella, Labor has two, the Liberals two and the last seat is a fight between the Democrats’ Jeanette Jolley and Labor’s Firstname (check) MacDonald, with the Democrats favoured.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_count analysis”

The hallmark of Kate Carnell’s Chief Ministership has been a bright, optimistic, enthusiastic, tireless proponent for Canberra. Those characteristics were both her assets and her liabilities.

On one hand, the can-do, outcomes-based, push-ahead attitude resulted in an impatience with process, as if it were a hurdle to be got around or cut through rather than an important element in reaching good decisions. It meant when thing went wrong it was easy to lay blame. She could not easily lay out the paper trial with all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. It gave those adversely affected by decisions easy grounds to feel disaffected. They were not consulted, or if they were consulted they were not listened to, or if they were listened to they were ignored.

On the other hand, the enthusiasm and hard work have made this city a better place with a brighter future than in 1995 when she came to office.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_carnell political obit”

When Kate Carnell leaves the Assembly, her vacancy will be filled – not by by-election – but by a count-back of the 25,379 ballot papers for voters who marked Carnell 1.

Only those who stood in the 1998 election are eligible to stand for the vacancy. Presumably, the Liberals’ Jacqui Burke would be a candidate. She was the last Liberal candidate to be excluded in 1998.

Because Mrs Carnell got more than a quota, all of her 23,379 physically ballot papers were distributed according to preferences and are now scattered among nine bundles totalling 75,667 ballot papers in electoral office. So the count process will take a long time.
Continue reading “2000_10_october_carnell count-back”