On Sun, 10 Jul 2016 21:27:45 +1000, Stephen Loosley <[email protected]> wrote:
> The country has come to a political standstill Hooray! it's not a problem. Political systems are slow responsive, loosely coupled to the service operations of government. It really does not matter for months if there is a caretaker government with a pause in the continuous dribble of attempts to fine tune systems through political reform. The country still operates - the utilities run, taxes are collected, salaries and contracts and welfare are all paid, hospitals keep running, defence forces still stand ready, operations continue - you'll notice that the Australian stock market, bond prices, exchange rates have barely murmured in response to the chatter about delayed confirmation of tha election result. Electronic voting would be nice as an efficiency but is not a game changer. I'm more concerned that the system should be an accurate indicator of the voters' opinions: which is subverted by reporting early counts before the polls close. Election reporting rules need to catche up with the availability of electronic communications (since radio in the 30s!). The early results from the first booths to close in the eastern states should not be available until after the western states close two hours later (better yet, not even be counted - to avoid danger of leaks). Otherwise - if we just want more efficiency, they could start counting postal votes before election day, just not release the results. I would object to this, as it makes even worse the same danger of leaked early results perturbing the later voters. -- Chris Johnson, Hon AsPro ANU _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
