This idea to delay Senate counting, floated in the Australian newspaper on 12 March by AEC Commissioner Tom Rogers, is crazy.
It indicates just how incompetent the Electoral Commission is, and just how far removed it is and out-of-touch with modern business and management practices.
He says that not counting the Senate ballot papers on election night would "probably aid accuracy" of the House of Reps counting. "probably"?!!
Well, the practical reality of vote-counting on election night is that at each polling booth the AEC officials, with scrutineers watching, firstly do the counting of the House of Reps ballot papers, add up the figures and telephone them through. Then the admittedly-tired AEC officials do the counting of the Senate ballot papers, with scrutineers watching. So it is a crazy lack of logic to suggest that by abandoning the second task (Senate ballot counting), then they would "probably" improve the accuracy of the first task which has already been completed! That is a 'non-sequitur'!
If the AEC cannot provide and train adequate staff to do the work tasks - it is not rocket science, and they have done it before - then they should move over and let the Government outsource the running of elections to companies overseas that provide seamless and fraud-free election services in many countries.
Companies like smartmatic.com or Electoral Services International could conduct elections more efficiently than the clumsy juggernaut that the AEC has turned into, while politicians from both sides of politics have over a long period of time merely acquiesced and let the AEC get away with 'blue murder'.
While the recent loss of WA senate ballot papers has brought the AEC's poor performance into stark public awareness, people need to understand that that loss was but the 'tip of a very large iceberg' -- there have been many examples for many years where the AEC has been losing ballot papers and committing other bungles, but politicians have been too lazy or too busy to care and to pull the AEC into line to make it manage its processes properly.
The Australian National Audit Office reports of 2002,2004 and 2010 give horrifying descriptions of the AEC's inadequacies and incompetences in maintaining Electoral Rolls with Integrity, but nobody was bothered to take any notice and nobody was bothered to fix things up until finally we had the big case of 'egg on the face' due to the WA Senate election botching.
comment by Lex Stewart, President AFHE"
It indicates just how incompetent the Electoral Commission is, and just how far removed it is and out-of-touch with modern business and management practices.
He says that not counting the Senate ballot papers on election night would "probably aid accuracy" of the House of Reps counting. "probably"?!!
Well, the practical reality of vote-counting on election night is that at each polling booth the AEC officials, with scrutineers watching, firstly do the counting of the House of Reps ballot papers, add up the figures and telephone them through. Then the admittedly-tired AEC officials do the counting of the Senate ballot papers, with scrutineers watching. So it is a crazy lack of logic to suggest that by abandoning the second task (Senate ballot counting), then they would "probably" improve the accuracy of the first task which has already been completed! That is a 'non-sequitur'!
If the AEC cannot provide and train adequate staff to do the work tasks - it is not rocket science, and they have done it before - then they should move over and let the Government outsource the running of elections to companies overseas that provide seamless and fraud-free election services in many countries.
Companies like smartmatic.com or Electoral Services International could conduct elections more efficiently than the clumsy juggernaut that the AEC has turned into, while politicians from both sides of politics have over a long period of time merely acquiesced and let the AEC get away with 'blue murder'.
While the recent loss of WA senate ballot papers has brought the AEC's poor performance into stark public awareness, people need to understand that that loss was but the 'tip of a very large iceberg' -- there have been many examples for many years where the AEC has been losing ballot papers and committing other bungles, but politicians have been too lazy or too busy to care and to pull the AEC into line to make it manage its processes properly.
The Australian National Audit Office reports of 2002,2004 and 2010 give horrifying descriptions of the AEC's inadequacies and incompetences in maintaining Electoral Rolls with Integrity, but nobody was bothered to take any notice and nobody was bothered to fix things up until finally we had the big case of 'egg on the face' due to the WA Senate election botching.
comment by Lex Stewart, President AFHE"
RSS Feed