Saturday, July 14, 2012

Stephen Mayne's grubby preference deal

Self advocate and serial candidate Stephen Mayne has entered in a grubby preference deal with the Greens in order to secure the Greens support for Mayne's tilt at the City Council elections in October.

Both the Greens and Mayne have placed the Christians (Family First- Australian Christians and the DLP) last.


Mayne has back stabbed Liberal Candidate David Nolte and has preferenced the Greens ahead of Nolte in his How to vote Cards. (Notle was dupped into placing Mayne 3rd on his HTV cards only to find out that Mayne sold him out and placed the Greens ahead of the liberal party.

Mayne's cynical move has brought Nolte's campaign to an abrupt holt.  up for grabs in the election is the 27% Liberal party votes that were recorded in the 2010 ballot. Both Mayne and Nolte hope to attract the support of liberal Party voters.  Whilst David Nolte is the only member of the liberal Party standing in the by-election offically the Liberal party has not endorsed any candidates.     Mayne picks up preferences from a host of rat bag socialist candidates but misses out on the Family First and DLP vote all which favour Nolte ahead of Mayne.  if Mayne can survive Nolte, his main rival Mayne will then go head to head against the Greens in what could be a three way battle.  Labor's candidate Jennifer Kanis is well placed on preference picking up most preference allocations ahead of the Greens The greens are 100% reliant on Stephen Mayne for any chance at winning the seat. Local polls show that it will be a battle between the greens and the ALP with the ALP maintaining a home advantage. 

The defunct Australian Democrates have abandoned their policy of a balanced how to vote card and have preferenced Mayne ahead of the Greens. Sex Party, which is expected to poll around 4-5% have preferenced the ALP behind David Nolte.  If Notle, who also benefits from the Donkey vote, out polls Stephen Mayne, Stephen Mayne's show comes to an abrupt holt. Mayne is expected to poll around 7% and (backed by the likes of Jon Faine, ABC radio) will take votes away from the Greens and partially the Liberal Party. in the absence of a liberal party endorsed candidate the donkey vote is expected to be much higher in this by-election, possible as high as 6% and could play a decisive roll in the outcome of the ballot

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How high has the donkey and informal vote proportion been historically for these elections?

MelbCity said...

Thanks for your comment.

The Donkey vote can be as high as 5%. It is expected to be even higher given that the Liberal party (which held 27% support in 2010) have not endorsed a candidate (Although David Nolte is a long standing local Liberal party member)

Apart from the direct donkey vote there i whats referred to as the indirect donkey vote, where voters vote for their primary candidate and then fill in preference from the top down. This is a significant, it was the donkey vote that elected Robert Doyle to the position of Lord Mayor.

IN Tasmania they have implemented a system called the Robson Rotation ballot where the names on the ballot paper are printed in a sudo random fashion.

Sadly electoral reform is off the radar with all major political parties not addressing issues of voter reform. There are Major flaws with the voting system implemented for multi-member electorates. (Method of counting the vote and the method of count back used to fill casual vacancies in local government elections MUST be reviewed)

The system of optional preferential voting that was been introduced in Victoria is another issue of concern.

In 2010 the VEC actively encouraged voters who voted below the line to only preference 1 to 5. This policy effected the outcome of the Western Metropolitan upper house seat. The VEC should have encouraged voters to fill in all preferences.

Anonymous said...

I'm not convinced that Mayne will score votes from people who'd otherwise vote Green. I haven't paid attention to any of his media spruikers, but I would think that he's too low-profile and unknown to receive any significant publicity that doesn't include his history and stated views (which won't sit well with a lot of Greens-inclined voters).

Judging by the tabloid coverage today, it looks like it's the Greens making Labor crap itself, and no one else.

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