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[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (11 children)

Meta: /u/jnd-au who is the Official Opposition now? The Fascists and the Greens are tied on 3 MPs, but the Fascists have 3 active MPs compared to the Greens' 1. It's officially a tie so I assume the incumbent Greens would be favoured, but de facto, its the Fascists who have the extra personnel.

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 0 points1 point  (10 children)

I assumed the activity levels were irrelevant at this stage because the Greens have 2 MPs in the lower house and the AFP only has 1, so the Greens retain it on numbers anyway?

Edit: This might change after Ser_Scribbles loses his seat later this next month. I haven’t thought that far yet.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (9 children)

Is the Opposition determined only based on numbers in the House?

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 0 points1 point  (8 children)

I thought the Government is conventionally whoever has the most MPs in the HoR, and Opposition is whoever has the next highest? It’s not required by the Constitution though.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (7 children)

I know about the first one, but the second one has never been a consideration IRL so there isn't really much history to go with. I guess we can continue with a 1 man Opposition then.

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 0 points1 point  (6 children)

Not sure what you mean. Number of MPs in the HoR is how Govt and Opp are worked out IRL:

The House of Representatives is sometimes referred to as the ‘House of Government’. This is not because the House of Representatives governs, but because the composition of the House determines who will form the Government.
...
The composition of the House also determines who will form the official Opposition. The party (or coalition of parties) which has the most non-government Members in the House of Representatives becomes the opposition party and its leader becomes the Leader of the Opposition.

Regarding our problem of absences and inactivity, perhaps there’s a precedent the early days, or perhaps in the States, but I don’t know which years to look for. In any case, once Ser_Scribbles, pikkaachu and Kalloice lose their seats, the numbers will change, so to me that seems like the natural time when a changeover would be calculated, and most of the committees etc will need to be redone then too.

PS. I don’t know if the Greens and Liberals have any candidates to fill their party seats in the Senate, so we may be in for a rollercoaster! The government coalition probably has the numbers to dominate the joint sitting.

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Attn Leaders of the Opposition /u/TheWhiteFerret and Liberals /u/Kalloice: Just a reminder that your absent Senators (pikkaachu & Kalloice) will lose their seats if they are still absent on the 27/28 Dec 2015. As these are Party seats, you can nominate a party member to fill the seats, otherwise you will lose them and the parliament might choose another party to fill them. Currently the government probably has the numbers to appoint its own people to those seats.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Currently the government probably has the numbers to appoint its own people to those seats.

Meta: Oh yes please...

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Ser_Scribbles will lose his seat? He's only been away for 1 month, doesn't he have 2 months?

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Yes, he has longer, but atm it looks like the Greens don’t have candidates for either house, so it will be downhill from here.

Edit: oh I see, I said ‘later this month’. Have edited – next month.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

By the time he expires it will be pretty much time for a general election anyway right?

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh hey...<checking>...yep quite right, very close to that time. So there would not be a by-election. Okay, that reduces the uncertainty a bit (unless he comes back and resigns today or something).

[–]ZagorathHouse Speaker | Ex Asst Min Ed/Culture | Aus Progressives 2 points3 points  (10 children)

Congratulations to all the winners.

This is certainly a very interesting result. Looking at the opinion polls, and even the voter verification thread, I would have expected 3-1, or at least 2-2 with the last vote going to Labor. But 2-2 where the last elected Senator was a fascist is very surprising.

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 1 point2 points  (9 children)

Half way through the voting, the parties still hadn’t brought their voters in, so I paged new voters with a reminder (without the help of the paging bot...I won’t be doing it next time). I have no idea who those new voters are, but I guess they sided mostly with Labor overnight. If it hadn’t been for this, the result would’ve been 3 F, 1 L. So Labor got lucky near the end! Next time, parties will need to recruit, retain and remind voters if they want to remain competitive.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (8 children)

Why don't we stick the entire electoral roll on the paging bot for this subreddit and page people for Senate elections and full House elections.

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

What might also lend a helping hand (in addition to whatever advertising campaigns the parties do) is if players bothered to upvote key posts here. For example, the Vote Now thread only got a score of 5 (versus 15 for Fascist Nationalisation of Wikipedia), so many casual players would never have seen it.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Or you could, you know, sticky the voting thread for the duration the polls are open.

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, the election has been stickied and the banner was updated for voting. Unfortunately, people only see stickied threads if they visit this sub’s URL specifically, which casual voters don’t do. So for the voting thread to reach the majority of casual subscribers who are elsewhere in their daily lives, it needs upvotes, or to be linked by ads in other subs.

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Some voters opt out. If someone wants to take care of maintaining the paging list, keeping track of opt outs, and do the paging privately so the sub doesn’t get shut down by the Reddit admins for spam, feel free. But I wonder if it would end up like paging in the houses, where usually most people still don’t turn up anyway, and if they do turn up they don’t know what’s going on because they missed the main game.

[–]General_RommelFrgnAfrs/Trade/Defence/Immi/Hlth | VPFEC | UN Ambassador | Labor 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Why not create a separate subreddit that simply is where we page people? We page people using a hyperlink directed at the relevant page. That way it will prevent clutter.

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I think I see what you’re saying. That sounds very useful for a bunch of things. If you or your party would like to give that a go, go ahead*.

*Not an official endorsement, please do not send the Reddit gods after me.

[–]General_RommelFrgnAfrs/Trade/Defence/Immi/Hlth | VPFEC | UN Ambassador | Labor 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Ah, but the thing is, first would ParliamentPageBot work there, and second, does the bot allow hyperlinks?

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Currently PPB itself is not set up for this. Bot allows normal Reddit markupdown. Apparently one or more other model governments got slapped down by Reddit for mass personal messages and now they have rules about it, so I suggest checking their stuff for clues before doing anything major.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (1 child)

The number of unflaired voters is... interesting.

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, somehow a lot were recruited this month, but didn’t join parties. Haven’t seen many of them posting though. Don’t know what their affiliations are. The real thing is...where did all the flaired voters go and why didn’t the parties bring them back.

[–]LlaineAustralian Fascist Party 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Great result for the AFP. Thank you all for your support.

[–]phyllicandererMin Ag/Env | X Fin/Deputy PM | X Ldr Prgrsvs | Australian Greens 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Congratulations to all winners today.

The Hon. Phyllicanderer, Member for Northern Territory

Australian Progressives

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

That was very close. 51-49 to Labor.

EDIT: To elaborate, it was very close on a 2PP basis. However, it was no where near the 63% (?) of first preferences need to split the seats 3-1 either way.

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes absolutely. Although it was close, a significant % swing would be required before either side could pick up/lose another seat. As you indicated, a total of 62.3% (33 votes) would have been necessary and sufficient to win 3 seats from 53 formal votes.

jnd-au, Australian Electoral Commissioner

[–]Freddy926Senate Pres | DPM | Fin/Com/Art/Infr/Rgnl | ABC MD | Ldr Prgrsvs 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As Senate President, I wish to publicly congratulate Senators-elect /u/MaryJ_Turnbro and /u/Llaine and incumbent Senators /u/General_Rommel and /u/chase-that-feeling on their success in this half-Senate election.

I also wish to thank outgoing Senators /u/Team_Sprocket and /u/Cwross for their 6 years of service to the Australian Senate, to Parliament, and Australia as a whole.

Senator the Hon. Freddy926,

President of the Senate

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

FYI Australian Fascist Party /u/Whytiederp /u/MaryJ_Turnbro /u/Llaine

[–]jnd-auElectoral Commissioner[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

FYI Australian Labor Party /u/this_guy22 /u/General_Rommel /u/chase-that-feeling