Has Labor won yet?

[donnashuggy]

Or isit too tight?

[the_hawk*]

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@lyndal1838 wrote:

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Next election I would advise you to apply for postal voting online, direct to the AEC.

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OMG "I then got them direct from the AEC and I will not be dealing with or responding to either parties offers for potal votes again."

[donnashuggy]

[village_person]

"The question is can he take the now very left-wing Labor Party anywhere back near the centre? That'll be the real test...or whether he's stuck with the Loony Tunes show on the left"

Village Person on

Bill Shorten.

[the_great_she_elephant]

The real question is: regardless of who finally manages to scrape together enough support from independants to form a governent, how long will it be before it all  collapses like a pack of cards and we're back to another excruciating election campaign?.

[davidc4430]

oh, wasnt the last 8 weeks fun.

seeing pollys kissing everything in sight.

chewing food from unusual angles.

prommising rain to drought effected areas.

telling lies as fast as they could go.

meeting and greeting people they wouldnt usually talk to if you paid em.

going on tv and making complete idiots of themselves. ( mathias i'm looking at you)

the really stupid ones go into hiding.

better than any tv reality show.

[tezza2844]

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@the_great_she_elephant wrote:

The real question is: regardless of who finally manages to scrape together enough support from independants to form a governent, how long will it be before it all  collapses like a pack of cards and we're back to another excruciating election campaign?.

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I think Shorten will actually be hoping Turnbull "wins" this election . The prospect of trying run a minority Government in the house of Reps together with the mix of weirdos  who will have the balance of power in the Senate is not very inviting. It may be better for him sit back and watch the LNP destroy itself with in fighting between the Hard Right and rest of them. How long before Abbott "hears" the call for his return to lead the party from the powerful Right Wing extremist in his party.  There still is a large group within the party that believes that Toxic Tony would have led them to overwhelming win despite the polls having them down 56-44 to Labor just prior his "Back Stabbing". Poor old Mal was level pegging and is really doing it tough after a disastrous campaign, the excuses are coming thick and fast and range from the Medicare scare to bikies and Union thugs ringing voters up, the only calls I got at night were from Macolm or the local LNP candidate

[chameleon54]

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@tezza2844 wrote:

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. Poor old Mal was level pegging and is really doing it tough after a disastrous campaign, the excuses are coming thick and fast and range from the Medicare scare to bikies and Union thugs ringing voters up, the only calls I got at night were from Macolm or the local LNP candidate

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Perhaps you live in a safe seat. I live in Mayo where Mr. X's candidate was tipped to take the safe Liberal seat from the sitting Liberal member Jamie Briggs. This is what eventuated with the Xenephon candidate potentially holding the balance of power in a minority Liberal ( or Labour ) government. 

The phone was running hot in the fortnight leading up to the election. We where regularly asked to complete polls on our voting intentions and recieved multiple calls from Turnbull, Shorten , Liberal & Labour in general and also couple of minor parties including the Greens. We DID NOT recieve calls from unions or bikies, and did not recieve the Labour mediscare text that is the subject of police investigation.

 It is accepted that the unions where calling registered members, " encouraging " them to vote Labour.  Footage of the unions call centre has been shown on the ABC and the union heavies where interviewed, so I dont think this is in dispute.

[lurker172602]

Apologies if this has already been cleared up but I am still only on page 2.

There are no volunteers counting votes on Saturday night.  All the people in the polling place wearing the purple vests are casual paid employees of the AEC.  Each party can have scrutineers present for the opening of the ballot boxes at 6pm and observing the count.  They are not allowed to touch any ballot papers at any time.

The AEC staff count the votes on the two party preferred system.  These numbers are advised to the scrutineers who call them in to their party "bosses".  The AEC Officer in Charge also calls the numbers into the local supervisor who I assume reports to the Officerof Returns which is where the media get their numbers from.  Everything is then securely parcelled up and returned to the AEC where it is recounted by permanent staff over the next days.  They don't start that process until Tuesday to give all the declaration, absentee and interstate votes time to return "home".

Someone also mentioned online voting?  The federal elections don't use computers at the polling place.  At the last NSW state election we did had tablets with the roll on them as a lookup tool for Declaration votes, but Ordinary voters were checked only against the hard copy rolls.  These are later electronically scanned and collated by the AEC.  That's why they are very particular about how each name is checked off.  There probably will come a day when online voting will become the thing, but at present I don't believe there are secure and reliable enough systems to guarantee an accurate result.  Think about how Telstra has been performing lately and what chaos something like that would cause on election day.

The reason I know all of this is because I have worked the past few state and federal elections as a casual polling official.  My sister in law is also a permanent AEC employee and we have been chatting a bit about the vote over the last couple of days.

[lind9650]

No matter how they count the votes, the end result will be incorrect as many people did not get a chance to vote.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/federal-election/hospital-patients-miss-out-on-voting...

Count this happening in each State and the number of non votes would make a big difference. Why did they think that Nursing Homes votes were unimportant? Because neither party had anything better to offer the Old Age Pensioner.

Erica

[lyndal1838]

Lurker, I believe you will find the previous posts have referred to the party scrutineers being volunteers.

And the "online" actions mentioned were in relation to applying for a postal vote.  You apply directly to the AEC and the voting forms are delivered direct to you by Australia Post.  It cuts out any chance the local candidate's office not delivering the applications to the AEC as has been mentioned previously.