Meta election.

[David Catchpole]

On Tue, 27 Oct 1998, Charles Fiterman wrote:

> At 12:00 PM 10/27/98 +1000, you wrote:
> >Um... Charles... you're in desperate danger of looking like what we
> >scholars of the University of Queensland at Brisbane call a graduate of the
> >"Wolston Park School of Politics, Economics, Philosophy and Physics." We 
> >often see them giving out fordigraphed handwritten pamphlets while we exit
> >the bus to uni. Wolston Park's proximity to a very large hospital should
> >also give you a good clue as to the nature of "enrolment." Assassination
> >is going a bit far just to suggest the removal of the candidate/corpse in
> >question.
> 
> Yes assassination is going too far, and last week I wouldn't have included it.
> But if you follow American news we just had a Republican candidate for the
> Senate murder his Democratic opponent. If you follow the news from Colombia
> you will see that kind of thing is common there.

Ouch. "Peace, Justice, and the American Way," huh?

> Now its here, a candidate in an American election has murdered his opponent.
> What are the consequences to the process. The Dead democrat has been removed
> from the ballot. His opponent, in prison but not convicted remains on the
> ballot. The Democrats are mounting a last minute write in campaign for the 
> widow but such campaigns generally lose and she is expected to lose. The
> Republican was 20 points behind in the polls and now is likely to win because
> he is running unopposed unless you know about the write in.

In Australia the death or unforeseen removal of a candidate elicits a
new election which is scheduled back to give the new candidates time to
campaign. It happened in our latest election that a candidate for a minor
party (Australian Democrats) died (natural causes, I hope) quite close to
election Saturday. The seat involved has had its elections delayed and was
reopened for nominations.