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Man Formerly Charged With Rigging Student Ballot Exposed As Labor Official
First time accepted submitter pocock writes "Motivated by reports of Matthew Weaver's twelve month jail sentence for rigging CalState student elections, a comprehensive blog describes in detail how a generation of student ballot riggers from the late 1990s have graduated unhindered into federal politics, playing a pivotal role in Australia's upcoming federal election. One can only wonder if Weaver had not been caught, would he too have eventually swiped a million dollars and put the SRC into liquidation?"
They might come from the "social democratic" tradition but there's nothing democratic about the Australian Labor Party. They're the masters of branch stacking and rigging votes, especially through union representation at national conferences. The party has become a joke and the sooner they're turfed in the coming months, the better. They need a few terms in the wilderness to clean up their filthy act.
A similar dynamic of student-election "dirty tricks" graduating into general election bugging and sabotage of election opponents played out during the Watergate scandal. Donald Segretti cut his teeth in election fraud during his USC days, and later applied his skills in Nixon's reelection campaign, the resulting "Muskie letters" effectively knocking a democratic senator out of the campaign. Karl Rove came from the same school of campaigning.
These incidents are as perfect an example of "Broken Window Theory" in politics as you are likely to come across. "Shenanigans" in college, if left unchecked, lead inevitably to outright election fraud. If you permit criminals to train their skills, operate unpunished, and indeed enjoy the rewards of their misdeeds, they are unlikely to change their ways in a hurry.
On a related note, I regard most student politcs in universities as a wholly illegitimate process. The resulting bodies and persons do not represent the student body or its values. At best, they organise drunken festivals and serve as a training ground for the corrupt and incompetent cadre currently in charge of the western world.
May the Maths Be with you!
It's confusingly written, but the blurb (and story) are just using him as the hook. The rest of the story is about Australian politics.
The premise seems to be something like this:
1. Heard about this guy Matthew Weaver, who's been in the news after he was convicted of rigging student elections in California?
2. Well, on that subject, did you know that a bunch of current Australian politicians also have a background rigging student elections back in their college days?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The two major parties are very similar in most respects. Both parties have been trying to out-do each other in reprehensible policies.
For me the election has come down to just a few issues:
1. The (incumbent) Labor party has a future-proofing, infrastructure-based Fibre-to-the-Premises broadband policy that is in build at the moment. The (opposition) Liberal/National coalition has a patchwork Fibre-to-the Node policy that they've been dragged kicking and screaming to because the FTTP policy has been so popular. The FTTN policy will cost almost as much to implement, cost more to maintain, and need replacing with FTTP before the FTTN build is complete.
2. The Labor party is still slightly less nasty on social issues (but they're doing their best to convince me otherwise right now).
3. The leader of the Liberal/National coalition - Tony Abbot - is a truly nasty piece of work. He is an intolerant bigot. He makes my skin crawl every time I hear him talk. I don't like the leader of the Labor party (Kevin Rudd) and was ambivalent on the recently-deposed leader (Julia Gillard) but there are some things they say that don't make my guts turn.
Disclosure: I'm personally scheduled to have the FTTP NBN start building in my town in about 1.5 years. For purely selfish reasons I need to vote for a party in the Senate (upper house) that will work to ensure that the NBN stays on track (I'm in a safe Liberal seat, so my vote in the House of Representatives means nothing). However I happen to think that the FTTP NBN is the most important infrastructure project we're likely to see in the next 50+ years, so my vote is not just for selfish reasons.
... I voted for Kodos.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Because the political agenda trumps legibility.
Take note of the source.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Can anybody imagine a US congressman collecting Weaver from the prison gates and deploying him to an office on Capitol Hill?
Yes, easily. Why do you even have to ask?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If you've some problem with Australia, you are free to ignore stories that mention it. Even those that are highly relevant to issues recently in the news in the US.
Those of us who are not as nearsighted as you can in the meantime read, discuss, and maybe learn something about what eventually happens after kids who rig school elections are allowed to go on to rigging real elections--and we'll be able to do so without being distracted by your petty bitching, thanks very much.
Cheers.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Matthew Weaver jail sentence came as a result of stealing passwords.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
You would be surprised at how easy it is to vote in Australia.
- At a polling station it hasn't ever taken me longer than 30 minutes to vote
- All I need to provide is my Name & Address
- I can turn up at any of the polling stations in my electorate.
- If I happen to be outside my electorate and a reasonable distance, then I can vote at any polling station in the country.
- If I happen to be busy on polling day (almost any excuse will do), then I can submit an absentee vote via post.
The easy of the process probably helps to explain why voting is compulsory. Sometimes I even take the kids along for a bit of civics education.
On election night we have details for the almost all seats in lower house with a couple of hours. Only a few very close seats take longer if postal votes or a recount is required.
Frankly, most Australians (and New Zealanders) are surprised at how hard the rest of the world makes the process of voting.
He was convicted of stealing 745 passwords. He did this to rig a school election. Did I miss something?
Perhaps.
The conviction was for stealing passwords. The election issue was a side-story as far as why he was brought up on charges.
In other words, had he manipulated the election without stealing passwords, his jail time would have been significantly less or nonexistent.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
We didn't have a Jerry Falwell contingent in my school. The religious kids tended to be mainstream Catholics, Methodists, Lutherans, etc. There wasn't much cocaine use, but there was a group of druggies who mostly smoked pot, and would also use cocaine or LSD when available.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Your great reference sounds like the Craig Thomson fan club from the comments. The linked article states that it is 173 charges relating to $28,000 of Health Services Union funds. The mere fact that it is called "Jacksonville" suggests a smear campaign against Kathy Jackson who first raised the allegations of corruption in HSU by Craig Thomson and colleague Michael Williamson.
What I see is evidence of Unions / Labor being more interested in internal politics than helping members / running the country.
Ah yes - the stunt where he wasted parliment's time to show how Catholic he was to the voters, and had his own department draft a pointless law telling him to do his fucking job. He then, with all the appearance of reluctance, did his fucking job. Anyone trying to pull such a thing in reality instead of a stage managed stunt would just be sacked by the prime minister for going against the party line.
The guy is a just an amoral factional head kicker that puts up whatever front that he thinks is going to do the job at the time.