Ethical umpire needed for elections
ROB SILVA: Tom Richardson’s column (On dirty tricks and hypocrisy, InDaily, August 9, 2013) was pretty close to the mark I thought. The troubling thing for me is that it seems the Australian Electoral Commission, despite being responsible for conducting elections, apparently has no role or powers to sanction participants in the electoral process who behave badly.
Of course it can be difficult to ensure that every individual behaves ethically. But it seems to me that an ethical organisation would not tolerate unethical behaviour at any time for any reason. Any offending staffers and/or volunteers should be sacked.
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There needs to be an external umpire. There needs to be someone with the power to call for a by-election when vote tampering is evident (and that would include dodgy how-to-vote cards or last-minute false promises). There needs to be someone to red-card offending volunteers and staffers. There needs to be someone who can de-register a candidate. There needs to be someone who can maintain the equivalent of ASIC’s Scam-Watch. The good news is that we have an organisation called the Australian Electoral Commission well placed to do all of those things. They just need a principled Parliament to empower them.
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