Three (or four!) days to go
So, it seems everyone’s hanging out for the specials: whether the political parties waiting to form a government or concede defeat; or the journalists desperate for a new angle now that post-election talks have gone into media hibernation. The latest hope is that the Electoral Office will get the final vote count done a day early. Reports NZPA:
The Electoral Office is not guaranteeing the final election results will be issued on Saturday. An Electoral Office spokeswoman said the results could be posted on the office’s website as early as Friday or late as Sunday depending on how the counting went. Good progress was being made, but the Chief Electoral Officer David Henry could not yet commit to a deadline for the results to be declared, the spokeswoman said.
Ah well: whenever the results are declared, the wait is almost over. Then the fun begins: the Brash concession (then resignation?); the Clark announcement of a new government; the pictures of the new Cabinet being sworn in; the first Question Time with new Ministers to be grilled; and so on. More and more, this interregnum is feeling like the calm before the storm…
September 27th, 2005 at 10:58 am
Well, David Henry is quite right not to be offering any deadlines after the char-grilling he got over the local body count farce last year. Now if only EEC head Murray Wicks could remove his head from his arse (all the better to cover it with, my dear) and acknowledge that he’s got a problem.
September 27th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
You forgot one piece of fun - the first sitting of Parliament. Have you the courage (and respect for Parliament as an institution) to install a good Speaker?
September 27th, 2005 at 12:24 pm
frog ..interregnum….you’ve fiilled my ‘learn a word a day’ for today..
oo-er..getting quite literate…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
September 27th, 2005 at 1:06 pm
Ok my turn for a ridiculous comment. I wonder if the electoral office will break down votes by species? ie Human, Canine, Feline, Reptile, Avian etc….
I wonder which parties the other species voted for?
September 27th, 2005 at 1:56 pm
Toa:
Just thinking of an answer to “which parties the other species voted for” …
the mind boggles!
eredwen
September 27th, 2005 at 2:49 pm
Well for starters the Greens have well and truly got the Frog vote in the bag.
September 27th, 2005 at 3:30 pm
And the Nats have the Lemur vote.
September 27th, 2005 at 7:17 pm
The Greens should get most of the herbivores. Joy.
September 27th, 2005 at 8:35 pm
You forgot the other scenario frog, where the Christian Fundies buy off the Electoral Offce and install an American Dictatorship.
September 27th, 2005 at 9:14 pm
The Unicorn vote was massively Green. The Devil vote was split.
September 27th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
Any my cat will hand over her Easy Vote card to the first person who comes bearing a kilo of shredded chicken. And we have the gall to sneer at the American electoral system? Is Winston still threatening to launch a electoral petition - that might well end up with our own version of the Supremes.
September 28th, 2005 at 1:25 am
Craig, there’s a bit of difference between a dog getting a vote and:
* biased returning officers who deliberately don’t investigate problems, or rule in favour of their man
* deliberate undersupply of voting machines in poor, ethnic areas
* 30% of all voting done on machines with no paper audit trail
* dirty tricks such as posters with incorrect voting details going up around town, or people being told to “come back tomorrow”
* massive use of electoral “challenges” to prevent poor, ethnic voters from voting
* massive numbers of former prisoners not allowed to vote, including a couple of million of people with drug offences
Yes I think we have a right to sneer at the state of “democracy” in the US, personally I think there is not much difference between elections in the US and Zimbabwe.
October 1st, 2005 at 12:15 am
“And we have the gall to sneer at the American electoral system?”
- emphatically yes.