Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Legal Beagle: 14 Pages of Democracy, in reply to Joshua Grainger,
Interesting. I don’t suppose a judgement is available for the Christchurch Central recount?
I’ve never known of a recount judgment before.
Which I realise now isn't entirely accurate, because Judge Adams himself references one :-)
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Legal Beagle: 14 Pages of Democracy, in reply to Joshua Grainger,
Interesting. I don’t suppose a judgement is available for the Christchurch Central recount?
I've never known of a recount judgment before. I kinda get the feeling that Judge Adams just really liked his involvement in the process and wanted to share it with the world. I love how you can just tell from reading the judgment that when he said it was a privilege to be involved he *really* meant it.
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Legal Beagle: 14 Pages of Democracy, in reply to Grant McDougall,
It’s also been observed that if Labour won, it’d only have a short-term effect anyway as Bennett would be next cab off the rank when Lockwood Smith high-tails it to London.
1. The bigger effect is not that Bennett is out of Parliament, but that the government's strength will drop by one, and Labour's increase by one, meaning that National + ACT + United Future is not enough votes to pass a law (e.g. assets sales).
2. It is not clear that Bennett would be next cab off the rank. She may miss out altogether.
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Legal Beagle: 14 Pages of Democracy, in reply to Deborah,
The contrast with the hanging chads episode is remarkable.
The thought of looking through the back of a voting paper with it held up to the light doesn't seem to you to be the New Zealand equivalent of the famous photo of the Florida election official holding up a ballot to the light?
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Legal Beagle: 14 Pages of Democracy, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
The latter, because they are volunteers after all and it’s simply fanciful to presume any party can supply scrutineers for every booth. I’d also point out that scrutineers are just that – they’re severely (and properly) restricted in how they can respond to situations like that.
The vote-counting in the polling booth on election night (such as Emma was involved with) wasn't the one that was wrong. On election night, the ballots are taken to the returning officer, who conducts the official count (in a manner probably not all that unlike occurred here). It was that official count that was wrong. The election night count is just so we all kinda know what happened before we go to bed, it doesn't mean anything.
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Judge Adams's initial decision, noting how the vote count changed is less cool, but is here for all you completists :0)
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Legal Beagle: Paula's Peril; or The…, in reply to Phil Lyth,
Given that Raymond Huo won't even be a party to the proceedings, it seems somewhat wrong to have his continued membership of Parliament turn on the case.
My view is that the Act only gives the High Court to make orders in relation to the one seat in Parliament about which the petition is lodged. I don’t think it has ever been suggested that there is any power to make consequential variations to list seats.
I concur. Parliament has made a choice. Maybe it made the wrong choice? There are positives and negatives to each and people may take a different view about where the balance should lie. It could have made a different choice. But it didn't.
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Legal Beagle: Paula's Peril; or The…, in reply to gavin long,
Graeme – out of interest, can you please point to which sections of the electoral act you are basing this analysis on?
Will hopefully do that in the next couple of days, but in short, it's a combination of sections 55, 229(3) and 243, and a fair bit comes down to the absence of the necessary laws to have some alternative happen.
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Legal Beagle: Paula's Peril; or The…, in reply to Kumara Republic,
it’s a long shot, but would this count as intimidation under the Electoral Act 1993?
Unless it comes down to one vote, it doesn’t matter. Bennett can get kicked out of Parliament for committing a corrupt practice. She can’t get kicked out because someone else might be found to have committed a corrupt practice!
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Legal Beagle: Paula's Peril; or The…, in reply to Phil Lyth,
But before it got to that point, I have no doubt that John Key would use urgency to change s137(2) to refer to the highest person on the list not currently in Parliament. Then if the decision on a petition goes the wrong way, he opens up a vacancy by finding a nice job for Cam Calder.
He'd better not. That's getting toward Duynhoven territory. The election rules may be stupid (i'm not saying they are, but I'm open to the point), but they're the rules and everyone has to play by them. Change them for the future, sure, but urgent partisan changes to electoral law are a big no-no. Not least because it's not actually all that urgent, any change wouldn't be needed until the first list resignation, which could be a year away.
Of course, depending on when they try to do this (before any petition is heard or after?), they might not have the numbers...
