atw: Re: OT: Grumbling About Elections... vote
- From: Anne Casey <writan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:14:21 +1000
At 11:40 PM 20/08/2012, you wrote:
Anne,
Do people in prison get a vote?
Does it depend on the length of their sentence?
I read an article on this ages ago and it seemed to me that if a
prisoner is going to be released within the term of the next govt,
then they can vote. If they are in for life, then they don't get a vote.
Ah, this got VERY messy just before the 2004 election. From memory,
if your sentence was less than two or three years, you got to vote in
prison (the AEC goes around to places like nursing homes, hospitals
and prisons before election day, and flies out to some remote
settlements. Others without polling places use postal votes). John
Winston Howard decided to pass a law in 2004, not long before calling
the election, where if you had less than a specified number of days
left on your sentence ON ELECTION DAY, you could apply to vote.
Sounds ok in theory, but - since federal elections do not have set
terms, there is no way of knowing if a prisoner will be able to vote
until the election is called, and somebody does the maths on _every
single prisoner's sentence_. Since the electoral roles closed in 2004
a week after the election was called, that gave the prison systems a
week to get all of that sorted out. Basically, an impossibility. This
was why I spent so much time talking to the AEC lawyer, as we talked
through the ramifications, and he pleaded for a change to the Act.
The radio talk show hosts thought it was a great idea (because it's
generally thought that prisoners vote Labor), but since prisoners on
short sentences have had the vote for longer than Canberrans, it was
a backward step.
We got the change reversed, but they've probably gone on to tinker
more with that. The LNP's current favourite is multiple voting - and
since that has _never_ had an effect on the outcome of an election,
it's just another excuse to make it harder to vote (or turn up and
get your name crossed off, what ever you chose).
Of course, the politicians try to get the rules adjusted to
'disenfranchise' or 're-enfranchise' one group of the population.
Exactly :-)
I remember Prince Charles commenting that along with idiots and
criminals, he does not get a vote.
I believe that is by custom, but I don't know anything about the UK
system - I find it hard to wrap my head around First Past the Post,
but then they probably would run screaming into the night if I
explained Hare Clark with Robson Rotation to them ;-)
VOTING AGE
Currently, the voting age is 18. Seems simple.
But how old do you need to be to apply to enrol?
At one time, you had to be 18 to apply.
At another time, you had to be on the roll (and 18) when the rolls
closed before an election.
This very effectively disenfranchised a lot of 18 year olds who had
a birthday the day before an election, or the day after the rolls closed.
Currently, my 16 year old son is filling in his enrolment forms, in
expectation of growing old.
Contact the AEC - I'm pretty sure they let you enrol in advance these
days. They also have some great free publications if your son is
interested - there used to be a quite large book on the history of
the electoral system in Australia with stuff like why women were
given the vote, why the people of the ACT lost the vote (and when
they got rather limited voting back again), how they determine
electoral boundaries, the complicated maths on how they figure out
who gets each Senate seat - all sorts of stuff. They even have maps
of each electorate, all for free.
I'm glad he's keen - while our politicians may not be to everyone's
taste, our system is one of the most democratic in the world, and
apathy will not improve it.
At least we're not in the USA, where the system was set up by the
founding fathers to keep power away from the masses.
/anne...
**************************************************
To view the austechwriter archives, go to
www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter
To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
"unsubscribe" in the Subject field (without quotes).
To manage your subscription (e.g., set and unset DIGEST and VACATION modes) go
to www.freelists.org/list/austechwriter
To contact the list administrator, send a message to
austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
**************************************************
Other related posts:
