I just wonder as to whether GetUp has been acting as a proxy for the Federal government in its launching of its last minute challenge to the constitutionality of the provisions of the Electoral Integrity Act 2006.

It is a very appropriate time to call to mind that government's Electoral Reform Green Paper of 2009 that sought public input into the reforms canvassed therein.



Given that online participation in such input is of ever-increasing significance in community consultation, it was astounding to see the public online forum set up for that purpose initially only be open for just five days! One of the very early posts to that forum was one by Klaas Woldring, a regular article contributor to OLO, who warned that:

"... This is not an independent Inquiry.
Objectively, it is an Inquiry launched by
a major party, the one that is in Government."

More of the history of that dpmc.gov.au forum is set out in the OLO General Discussion topic 'An apology to Klaas Woldring', see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3212&page=0 , with links thereto.



The long and the short of it all is that I suspect the government did not get the sort of community response it was seemingly hoping for, one that would have seen it receive widespread community support for large numbers of effectively unscrutinizable additional enrolments, and in due course votes, into the electoral process. Indeed it received advice as to the existence of potential problems with respect to unintended consequences of some existing legislation, about which it did seemingly nothing.

To have debated legislation that may have fixed these problems in Parliament would, of course, have attracted public attention to the fact that the executive government was trying to sidestep the bi-partisanly composed Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters that had been set up to provide balanced consideration of just such electoral proposals.

Could the recent leadership change have been made to divert attention from the government's unwillingness, perhaps even inability, to respectably debate electoral reform in Parliament?

Is this election now being rigged?

Forrest: The election is almost certainly being fixed! The question is really how fixed it is? and how far will the government need to fix it without causing suspicion.

Forrest: The election will always be a fix, it is really a matter of finding out how fixed it was.

Thank you for your recent request to the PM for my wife and I and children's sake.

I do not know you! But I know in my heart that you do what is right for your fellow countrymen even if it is at your own risk!

My wife and I are in court facing false charges without evidence on the 11th August 2010 and wish you more luck than we will have had with getting a fair hearing, and hope you can get a fair outcome in your election.

I have done my best, which has not been good enough I think to stop unfair extradition.

Forrest is the man to follow for justice and fairness. Goodbye! P.S Graham will not be allowed to communicate a court order

Interesting times indeed for the Governor-General.

Yesterday's ruling by the High Court generated some interesting comments to the relevant news item in The Australian. See: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/getup-wins-high-court-challenge-to-electoral-roll-cut-off/comments-fn59niix-1225902071456

In particular, this one, comment 38 of 91 to The Australian's news item, posted by 'roger connolly of hobart' at 2:10 PM August 06, 2010, in the context of this thread here on OLO, was interesting:

"Don't worry all you Labor voters, now the High Court
has handed down it's decision saying the Howard
government's 2006 electoral law is invalid, Labor will
try to cancel this election altogether and hold it again
early next year by which stage Gillard will hope to be
more popular. The current Governor General was appointed
by Rudd and a decision to rescind the poll is down to her.
In this scenario, don't put it past Labor to try any trick
in the book to cling on to government. They may even dump
Gillard and put Rudd back in. Be prepared for any kind of
stunt now they realise they have made a huge mistake going
early with Gillard."

I'm not sure that the Governor-General, having already issued the writs, can call the whole election off for the time being. I should imagine that the real situation would be akin to a re-starting of the electoral clock on the now-to-be-amended rolls as closed on 22 July 2010, in such manner as would occur in circumstance of the death of a candidate between the close of nominations and polling day under the provisions of Sections 180 and 181 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act.

It would seem as if the interests of some, who, if they had only known the view the court would take as to the constitutionality of their enrolment, may have nominated as candidates at these elections, have been overlooked.

It would seem the Governor-General could supply justice to such potentially intending candidates by re-starting the electoral clock, indeed may be obliged so to do.

That would open another door, wouldn't it?

For those viewers who are perhaps unaware as to what poster BrianHowes refers in his post of Saturday, 7 August 2010 at 11:06:14 AM, you can read yourself in on the thread 'Litter on Twitter from Switzerland for Julia', here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3810&page=0

It is disappointing the UK government haven't got the cojones the Swiss have shown they have over extradition matters. Perhaps the Boersma case might focus a few Australian DPMC eyes on what can easily happen to an innocent person here under the USDEA jihadist attitude described in the last paragraph of 'Operation Red Dragon'.




Much has been made of the provision, now found unconstitutional, of the Electoral Integrity Act 2006 that closed the electoral rolls at 8:00 PM on the day of issue of the writs, as having been some invention of the Howard government that lacked any precedent in electoral law.

Not so.

Prior to 1987, roll closure upon the day of issue of the writs had been the rule for many years, if not since Federation. It was done, among other reasons, to prevent the opportunistic last minute emplacement of perhaps questionable enrolments in marginal seats.

At the 1987 Federal elections, at which the seven days period of grace for enrolment applied, there was a surge in the nett enrolment level across Australia of around 220,000 enrolments. Although the Coalition parties at that election secured a greater number of votes Australia-wide than did the ALP, the Hawke Labor government was returned, with that return being credited to a successful 'targetting of the marginals' in its campaigning.

Years later it was able to be shown from the AEC's own published records that there had existed a discrepancy of 204,880 enrolments in its record system at that roll close. Other records that might not normally have been publicly available, but were provided to a Parliamentary inquiry in 1988, upon analysis indicated that the bulk of the enrolment surge actually occurred prior to the announcement of that election.

All in all, a bit of a worry. Elections could have been rigged.

Happening again?

Given that in a clunky sort of a fashion I am trying to get a feel for whether stuff that starts on OLO gets transmitted to any degree elsewhere on the internet, and/or to MainStreamMediaWorld, I'll pass this little observation on FWIW.

Both before and after the breaking news as to the High Court ruling announced in my post of Friday, 6 August 2010 at 12:35:20 PM, I took some screenshots of my Google searches, some of the results of which I commented upon in my earlier post of Friday, 6 August 2010 at 7:50:51 AM.

A screenshot I took of the same Google search at 10:32 AM had shown Professor Flint's 'Fraud and the election: High Court challenge' article page had been completely displaced from the Google top listings, at a time when Google showed "about 34,700 results" on pages from Australia for the search term. See: http://twitpic.com/2co33n

I was most surprised to find that, after having previously been displaced from the top listings, at 1:46 PM Professor Flint's article page was again top listing on the first page of the Google search, an hour and a half AFTER the SMH's first reporting the High Court ruling at 12:20 PM. At this time Google showed "about 45,300 results" on pages from Australia for the search term. See: http://twitpic.com/2cnwjb

I must admit I don't understand how Google automatically rates pages in determining what will display toward the top of the listing, but given the increase of 10,600 search results over the interval from 10:32 AM to 1:46 PM, I am surprised to have seen such an apparent number of hits on the 'Fraud and the election' article.

Is OLO more influential as a source of links, or effective initiator of searches, than we all realize?

The devil, as always, is in the detail.

In the detail of this news item in The Australian, see: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/getup-wins-high-court-challenge-to-electoral-roll-cut-off/story-fn59niix-1225902071456 , is this statement:

"In addition to those who enrolled in
the seven days after the rolls closed
on July 19, the ruling also includes
people who are overseas or of no fixed
address."

In just what way it includes people who are overseas, or what numbers are anticipated as being involved, is left unclear.

This reference to persons overseas concerns me, because it is well nigh impossible to emplace any polling place scrutiny on behalf of candidates at overseas polling places. Presumably all persons presently entitled to vote while overseas (those registered in accordance with the current provisions of the CEA) are in possession of an Australian passport. Is the passport demanded for presentation when overseas voters make a vote claim?

The reference further concerns me because, in the touting of the figure of around 1.3 million unenrolled, no mention has been made as to from precisely what source the missing million or so, other than the youth cohorts, comes from. There are three different identifiable groups of around one million members that this estimate COULD have been referring to. Those groups are:

1. The expatriates other than registered overseas voters (not part of the population counted in a census);

2. Those who have migrated to Australia but have not yet taken up citizenship (not countable as part of the eligible, but counted in census);

3. Permanently resident British subjects unconstitutionally disfranchised (counted as part of the population, and perhaps secretly being counted as part of the eligible?).

Which group of around one million prospective enrollees IS being referred to?

It concerns me that, prior to the five-day short-fuzed opportunity for public input to the Electoral Reform Green Paper being extended, such response as had already been made was largely one complaining at the 'disfranchisment' of the expatriate Australian community. Was it a Dorothy Dix forum?