• A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers. - Friedrich A. Hayek

election

Election Staff to Complete Incomplete Ballots

Posted by Michael Conaghan on 1st April 2011 2:48pm

It's April Fools Day but sadly the new proposal for election staff to complete incomplete ballots is not a joke.

"The move could have a major impact on Queensland contests, due to the state's high informal vote rate.

The chairman of the parliamentary committee examining last year's high number of informal votes, federal Labor MP Daryl Melham, wants to introduce a "safety net" to halve the number of votes deemed informal in federal elections."

The unquestioned premise here is - why is a high number of informal votes a bad thing? Unfortunately there is no way to officially determine the number of protest votes versus those who simply cannot fill out a ballot form properly.

3 Stooges? More like 2.5
By Eric Smith  
Wed, 25/08/2010 - 1:05pm
Wed, 25/08/2010 - 1:05pm

 

Tony Windsor - Big-Government Ethanol

 

Tony Windsor won his seat of New England from the National Party’s Stuart St Clair at the 2001 federal election. Prior to Windsor’s victory, the National Party had held the seat since the 1920’s. Given that, one would immediately expect someone like Tony Windsor to express similar views to those of Bob Katter. However, when you first hear the bloke talk, you get quite a shock.

When, in recent days, he has been asked to express what issues are important to him, he rattles off what sound like a series of Green party talking points. He likes to talk about ‘Renewable Energy’ and has said he is in favour of a price on carbon. He also speaks positively on Labor’s debt-monster, the National Broadband Network (NBN), a re-nationalisation of the telecommunications industry.