New poll says Assange could win Australian Senate seat
By Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor
23rd April 2013 00:34 GMT
... Assange doesn't need 23 per cent of votes to win a seat, because voting for Australia's Senate uses compulsory preferential voting, with candidates elected if they secure a quota of one sixth of all votes cast. Once a candidate secures a quota, further votes for that candidate are passed on to voter's second preference. This system means that a candidate can be elected without many voters selecting them as their first preference.
The realities of Australian politics mean that the State of Victoria, Assange's home for several years, will elect two Senators from the dominant Labor party and its main rival the Liberal/National coalition. A fifth seat will likely go to The Australian Greens, leaving the sixth up for grabs.
That seat may, if recent history is any guide, go to a candidate who secures as little as two per cent of first preference votes. That's what happened in 2004 when Senator Steven Fielding won just 1.8 per cent of the vote, despite belonging to a party Family First that had never previously run at a Federal election. In 2010 the State elected a Senator from the Democratic Labor Party, an organisation founded in the 1950s as an anti-Communism movement with sectarian overtones and which had been in remission between 1978 and and 2004. Senator John Madigan won that seat with 2.33 per cent of the vote.
Senators Fielding and Madigan both benefited from major parties directing preferences in favourable ways. There's no indication Assange will receive similar treatment, which will cruel his chances. Nor can he count on support from sympathetic parties: The Greens won just 1.02 quotas in 2010, so even if the party wins again it won't have many excess votes to send Assange's way ...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/23/assange_poll/
pscot
(21,023 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Julia Gillard is her PM. Sir Julian will bid adieu to the weather of the British Isles and return to the sunny land Down Under.
Tanelorn
(359 posts)we know this is an embarrassment .Every time we get close something spooks us and then republicanism is put on the backburner for another few years. Apparently we are waiting for the present queen to die before we go ... less treasonous that way.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Now THAT'S embarrassing!
And you have universal health care, gun control, good wages, stuff like that we've never had. lost or can't get going.
Having a republic ain't all it's cracked up to be, Tanelorn.
treestar
(82,383 posts)If that were to happen, Australia would likely gain a noisy pro-Assange voice in Parliament. That could still be useful to Assange, as the Senate has not delivered an absolute majority for the government of the day during most of the last thirty years. Minor party or independent Senators therefore often trade support for the Government's agenda for support for their pet causes.
Useful to Assange. Aha.
Violet_Crumble
(35,954 posts)This time round, it's looking like if things keep on going the way they are, there'll be a landslide victory in both the House of Reps and the Senate for the Libs/National Party coalition. Also, no major party will send their preferences his way, and preferences are vital to the last senate seat in states and territories.
From the article: 'Senators Fielding and Madigan both benefited from major parties directing preferences in favourable ways. There's no indication Assange will receive similar treatment, which will cruel his chances. Nor can he count on support from sympathetic parties: The Greens won just 1.02 quotas in 2010, so even if the party wins again it won't have many excess votes to send Assange's way.'
Matilda
(6,384 posts)The Coalition may not have control of the Senate, unless the Greens lose a seat. Three Greens are up for reelection this time around, and it is possible that they could lose in W.A. to a National, which may give the Coalition a slight edge.
The big question seems to hinge on the legality of Assange's bid just because the Electoral Commission has accepted his nomination doesn't mean his bid isn't open to legal challenge. It seems to revolve around two issues when Assange was last legally resident in Australia, and whether he currently owes allegiance to a foreign power, Ecuador.
Assange says he was last resident here in 2010, but it's quite likely he was only here on a short visit to his mother, and actually left in 2007, in which case he's exceeded the time limit to validly run for office. I don't know whether it's up to him to prove he was a resident or another party to prove he wasn't. As for owing allegiance to Ecuador because he's technically resident on their soil, that's one for the lawyers to sort out nobody really seems to have a clue, so I guess it's a very unusual situation.
If he wins, and his bid is ruled legal, but he can't take his seat because he's unable to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy, then the Wikileaks Party (already registered with the Electoral Commission) can appoint someone to take his place, but if it's illegal, the seat would go to the person with the next highest number of votes, and not to Wikileaks.