Comments on: election day

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 12:15:44 +0000

I’m also an “election process junkie”, and I followed it even though I’m in SA (we had our turn in March) and for a while it looked like the Country Alliance were going to get a seat!

The distributions for no.1 above-the-line are always available on the ABC & electoral commision websites, and the commentators thus have a go at guessing who’ll get in.

By: dan

dan — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 04:46:51 +0000

I thought the highlight of the ABC television coverage was how unbelievably grumpy Robert Doyle was, unceasingly criticising anyone who tried to put a positive spin on the result or Ted’s performance.

Bitter much?

By: Lance

Lance — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:40:20 +0000

Highlight of the night by far…on Jon Faine’s ABC radio coveage…was some glitch in the tally room computer, which briefly had Family First with a 34% primary vote in Caulfield…which was more than enough to oust the sitting member.

The ABC panel started off on some of the most ridiculous speculation to explain the result…including that the high Jewish population in the area may have supported Family First en masse(!)

They rang the sitting member for her reaction.. She was puzzled why she was receiving the call…and during the interview, fresh figures came in…..which more accurately had the Family First vote at about 1.7%, not 34%.

Oops.

By: just_nigel

just_nigel — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:28:02 +0000

Rant

As a fellow election process junky, I duly asked to see the ‘direction of preferences’ for the other parties. You may not have noticed that they are no longer stuck to the wall as they used to be, but for the past two ellections are only available by request from an ellection official.
Anyway the first THREE electoral officials knew nothing of what I was talking about. I was twice told to go back outside to collect the ‘how to vote’ cards from the candidates. Baah!
When I finally got passed up the chain to the boss, she did at least know that I was entitled to see where each party had registered to allocate their upper house preferences, and handed my a book of them - only, she had the wrong book ‘Northern Victoria’ instead of ‘Northern Metropolitan’.

/ Rant

Anyway in our province we didn’t have any Shooters Party, Citizens Electoral Council, or One Nation so I missed out that particular joy of numbering them last

By: alan

alan — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 09:44:22 +0000

Am quite confused at the moment;it didnt rain so assume the message from the bishops didnt persuade God to move around the low pressure systems at least to melbourne,however on the other hand the Christians did Ok;Family First scored 4.5%) the last time I saw figures.Still no one should give up on the low pressure systems,according to Fred Nile the day of praying for the shifting of the hydrologic cycle doesnt end until 9 on the 27th when the 700 christians and politicians sit down for the annual parliamentary prayer breakfast.

By: Lance

Lance — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 07:50:08 +0000

Oh, and it’s the one night of the election cycle where politicians are honest before things get back to normal tomorrow.

By: Lance

Lance — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 04:31:14 +0000

I know where I’ll be at 3 o’clock this afternoon (6 o’clock eastern summer time)…

Clicking on the internet radio stream from Victoria of the state election coverage.

There’s nothing better than the thrilled commentators…45 minutes into the count…getting their first figures from a booth in Orbost…..’with 0.02 percent of the vote counted there…I think we can see a trend against the Government..Kerry.’

And then 75 minutes into the count…..the party official on the panel says…’well, the night’s not going as well as we’d hoped….but you’ve got to remember… there were some boundary changes and the sitting member has run a very good campaign…Kerry’.

For an election tragic..it doesn’t get any better than this.