A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Long election counts

Anyone who has ever endured a recount on election night will sympathise with the candidates in the Australian electorate of McEwen in Victoria.

Yesterday they completed the first count - two and a half weeks after polling day.

It showed Labor gaining the seat by just six votes - from a total of over 100,000.

They've therefore started recounting and the latest coverage seems to show the Liberals back ahead.

In the meantime the sitting Liberal MP was allowed to vote in the Liberal leadership election - which was decided by a one vote margin.

6 Comments:

Blogger David Boothroyd said...

It's not that it takes so long to count. The Aussies have a rule that they have to allow 13 days after the poll for all the postal votes to trickle in; only then can a result be declared.

7:41 pm, December 13, 2007

 
Blogger Dave Cole said...

Worth mentioning that Howard lost his seat.

10:19 pm, December 13, 2007

 
Blogger Ravi Gopaul said...

Dave Cole said...
"Worth mentioning that Howard lost his seat."

Did he? Good!

10:48 am, December 14, 2007

 
Blogger Dave Cole said...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7140384.stm

1:52 pm, December 14, 2007

 
Blogger Graham said...

13 days to get the postal votes in!? but why? in other countries you have to get your postal vote in by the close of polls on polling day - why can't australia do the same?

3:38 am, December 16, 2007

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

they have compulsory voting, including for expats. Therefore they have a margin for error of 13 days.

11:29 pm, December 17, 2007

 

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