Dumping CPV might seem the easiest road to take especially in NSW and
QLD where state electoral provisions providing for optional preferential
voting are coming under threat but it is at the heart of a crucial
misunderstanding about the Neither! campaign.
The media and politicians have always characterised Albert as being a
well known advocate of optional preferential voting, or as Nick Minchin
recently put it, an advocate of a defacto first past the post system, or
as exposing a loophole in the electoral act. All of these
characterisations mask the real position which was put to the high
court, namely, that if compulsory preferential, (often referred to by
the media and politicians as Full Preferential voting) requires one to
make a mark in every box ie place a number in every square, that is one
thing, but when it is interpreted to require that people cast a positive
vote in favour of candidates they reject, then that is an entirely
different matter and obviously Ultra Vires.
This is why AL said that your point re OPV missed the boat.
What is more, he tried to get the High court to interpret s240 but they
would not. When the High Court refused to rule on s240, it eventually
came to the attention of the Supreme court of Victoria and they were
"forced to interpret" s240 ie the decision of justice Beach in 1996,
where he ruled that the legislation did require the use of consecutive
unrepeated numbers and it it this decision which is now enshrined as the
offending amendments to the Electoral Act. (ie the repeal of s270 and
the "tightening up" of 240)
Regards
Anita
The original high court case was about
-----Original Message-----
From: alister air [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sunday, October 25, 1998 4:42 pm
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: POLICY: Compulsory Preferential Voting
At 18:52 23/10/98 +1000,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Fellow Neitherists,
I would like to propose:
That until the nature of Australian electorates changes,
Neither adopt
national policy in favour optional preferential voting
for both single
member and multi-member electorates.
and that support for such a policy be a requirement for
membership.
I'd propose this because (unless I've completely missed
the point) this
seems to me to be where we're coming from, whether
anarcho-Stalinist or
otherwise. Forcing voters to preference people they may
wish to actively
vote against seems to be somewhat undemocratic, and
definitely is another
tool which props up the two-party state.
(So are single-member electorates, I'm coming to that in
a separate post)
----------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mailing list send an email to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the
subject.
For help with this mailing list, look at
http://www.neither.org/lists/public-list.htm
