Voting

[Tom Round]

Hello all,

Pursuant to the promise in my posting of last Friday, I have checked my 
electoral pocketbook from the Australian Electoral Commission. The 
information I provided about nomination/ ballot access rules in Australia 
was substantially correct save and except that parties cannot directly 
nominate candidates (unlike, say, West Germany where a nomination needs 
either - I think - a petitition signed by 200 voters, or the endorsement of 
a registered political party).

Where I got mixed up was that _normally_ H of Reps candidates submit their 
nomination papers to the returning officer for their particular electorate; 
however,  the "registered officer" (eg, Secretary) of a registered party may 
submit in bulk, to the state returning officer, the nomination forms of all 
the party's candidates in that state. This got fused in my mind somehow with 
the German provision.

On another note, I saw in today's newspaper that Virginia has just passed a 
bill to demote "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" from official state song to a 
kind of quasi-official anthem (much like "Waltzing Matilda" is here in 
Australia. Incidentally, we chose our national song in 1977 via a 
non-binding, multi-choice, preferential referendum - I'm looking for more 
information about it.) The bill was opposed by two mutually antagonistic 
blocs of legislators: (1) Black representatives who found the song offensive 
(one verse has a freed slave pining for the days of life under his old 
master) and wanted it scrapped entirely, and (2) conservatives who wanted it 
kept as the official song because of its historic tradition. I wonder what 
kind of voting cycles could have been generated by a clever political 
strategist using those preference configurations!

Tom Round
Griffith University - Brisbane, Australia
tomr at orgo.cad.gu.edu.au

-------------------
Overflow-Cc: 100245.2440 at compuserve.com ('Geoff Powell'),
   afreeman at acslink.net.au ('Andrew Freeman'),
   bmusidla at email.dot.gov.au ('Bogey M'),
   c-p-r at netcom.com ('Citizens for Proportional Representation'),
   crabb.deane at pi.sa.gov.au ('Deane Crabb'),
   dunnmj at ozemail.com.au ('Martin Dunn'),
   GGoode at VTRLMEL1.TRL.OZ.AU (Goode, Geoff),
   j.pyke at qut.edu.au (John Pyke, QUT Law School),
   jhtaplin at cygnus.uwa.edu.au ('John Taplin'),
   lee at cs.mu.OZ.AU ('Lee Naish'),
   martinw at cse.unsw.edu.au ('Martin Willis'),
   mdt at ozemail.com.au ('Matthew Townsend'),
   voting-systems at netcom.com ('Voting-systems')