Just in case you ever doubted that John Howard is the problem with the Coalition’s election hopes, check this analysis by Possums Pollytics.
For fuck’s sake, can we vote yet?
In the first week of the campaign, I thought it was just me. Maybe I’d seen a few federal elections and knew the pattern. But no, now I’m sure. This really is the most boring election in the history of western civilisation. Which is why I’ve written far less about it than I thought I would. It’s depressing.
I blame John Howard.
Representative Democracy
Here’s a nice antidote to the Coalition TV advert trying to scare us about [gasp!] the Labor party having links to trade unions.
Interestingly, it’s another election-related video that doesn’t have “real” names and addresses at the end saying where it came from. I wonder whether the Australian Electoral Commission will be attempting to prosecute any of these folks for this apparent breach.
Tory Map of the World
I’m a sucker for maps. I’m especially a sucker for satirical maps of our psychopolitical geography. So I reckon this Tory Map of the World from 1982 is pretty special.
I particularly like the entire Indian sub-continent labelled as “Pakis” and the mis-identification of Singapore.
Bonus link: A map of The World according to Ronald Reagan, with Africa divided into “Egypt” and “Negroes”.
Thanks to Strange Maps for the pointer.
Today’s election prediction
Gotta love the Internet. If you take the analysis of today’s Newspoll figures and plug them into Antony Green’s election calculator you get this astounding result.
An ALP win, with 102 seats in the House versus just 46 for the Coalition. Antony’s sliders didn’t even allow for a swing of more than 10% but the details are correct if you click through.
As Antony said on The 7.30 Report last night, “The biggest swing Labor have achieved and won Government was the Hawke-led Labor Party in ’83 a bit over 3 per cent. At the moment we’re talking about swings of double of almost triple that kind of swing.”
Hacking a voting computer
Voting by computer could well be a risk to democracy. Thankfully there are no plans to try this in Australia. Yet. But if there were, even if the hardware and software was audited, how would you know the software running on the machine on election day is the same as that which was audited? This video shows how easy it is to hack. The software can be replaced in just 60 seconds.