Three days out from a Federal election and we (the public) don't even have a published figure for the number of names on the electoral rolls, despite claims of as many as 100,000 new enrolments and/or transfers of enrolments having been ruled by the courts as being admissible for the elections since the roll close date of 22 July 2010. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10786#179799

Evenly spread, 100,000 names amount to 666 per electoral Division. But who is to say that they will have been evenly spread? If there has been any degree of selectivity in the lodgement of those enrolment claims, such a number could, perhaps improperly, completely alter an overall electoral outcome. Candidates and the public in general have a right to know these names before the poll. Why hasn't a supplementary list been published? These days enrolments are all electronically recorded: such a list could be put up on the AEC website within hours, surely.

I have just checked again the AEC website pages dealing with enrolment statistics, here:
http://www.aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/Enrolment_stats/ , here:
http://www.aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/Enrolment_stats/gazetted/index.htm , and here:
http://www.aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/Enrolment_stats/elector_count/index.htm

This Twitpic is of the lower part of the last web page link given above, with the page refreshed at 9:00 AM today. Note that the page was last updated on Thursday 29 July. http://twitpic.com/2fpwyn

It also seems as if 47,579 17-year-old provisionally enrolled electors turned 18 between 30 June and 22 July. See: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10786#179866

At most, the 17-year-old cohort of the population would comprise around 270,000 persons. With births spread more or less evenly throughout the year, that would mean only around 22,500 turning 18 in any one month, and then only if ALL 17-year-olds were enrolled. Only around 1 in 4 actually do.

Is this all just 'secret politicians' business', or do the people have some rights to know what is going on?

Restart the clock, Your Excellency, please.

Update! Update! Update!

In my preceding post I was critical of the apparent failure of the AEC to produce a supplementary list of the names of persons permitted to be enrolled in consequence of the recent High Court decision for the upcoming Federal elections.



I was behind the times, it appears.




The Governor-General in Council issued on Friday 13 August a Proclamation under Section 285(1) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 enabling the Electoral Commissioner to update the electoral rolls by the printing and distribution of supplementary lists. Here is the AEC announcement: http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Media_releases/e2010/14-08a.htm

I hadn't heard a word about it in the MSM. Did anybody else, I wonder?



It seems only fair to help promulgate the import of the Proclamation here on OLO, as it has been, seemingly, one of the few, if not the only, vehicles for raising public awareness of these electoral matters outside of the AEC's own publications. At least I draw an inference as to this being so from a Google search I just did a couple of hours ago using 'virtual tally room 2010' as the search term in 'pages from Australia'. It seems OLO outranks even the AEC's own pages, at least in some small measure. See: http://twitpic.com/2frx92 . And it stayed like that for over 15 minutes, too! Try it yourself if you don't believe me.




And yes, I am genuinely interested in the Virtual Tally Room for the 2010 Federal elections, as any poor hapless perusor of the complete comment history of Forrest Gumpp would likely eventually divine from that extensive gamboge tract of opening lines to posts, should they have had to wade through them. In 2007, for example, I thought the VTR was telling me that, transiently, more votes had been claimed in some Divisions than there were electors enrolled. That was a worry.

I still think the Governor-General should re-start the electoral clock and conscript randomly chosen candidates as a real alternative for Australian voters at these elections.

In the light of yesterday's little surprise as to Google rankings of pages relating to the Virtual Tally Room (VTR), and my having been just a little bit behind the times with respect to announcement of the Governor-General's Proclamation of Friday 13 August 2010, I draw to OLO viewers attention a new AEC web page: http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Media_releases/e2010/18-08.htm



It (the AEC media release) is headed "Election results broadcast live from the National Tally Room and Virtual Tally Room".




Near the bottom of this AEC media release is a purple highlighted text link of the words 'home page', from where it is advised a viewer of the media release can access the VTR for the 2010 Federal elections. This is where that text link delivers you, the viewer: http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Media_releases/e2010/\index.htm

This is a Twitpic of what I got when I clicked that link around 7:30 AM this morning: http://twitpic.com/2fzmqn

Surfing right along, I clicked the purple highlighted text link 'home page', expecting a link to the VTR to be visible thereon upon delivery. I saw this: http://twitpic.com/2fzo5f

Further down on the same page (the AEC Home Page), I saw the clickable text link 'Election results broadcast live from the National Tally Room and Virtual Tally Room'. That had to be what I wanted, didn't it? The VTR wasn't mentioned anywhere else on the Home Page that I could see. You now see what I saw: http://twitpic.com/2fzpiq

Nearly there, I thought to myself, thought I. Click!, and I got this: http://twitpic.com/2fzsgx

Yup, full circle: the AEC 18 August media release again!




All I wanted to do was have a look at the 2010 Federal elections VTR layout to see whether there would be provision this time around for the numbers of informal votes counted in the ordinary vote in polling places. Provision for this was omitted in 2007.

This, only two days out from the polling, Your Excellency.