Constitution Act 1934 (South Australia) 31—Vacation of seat in Assembly (1) If any member of the House of Assembly— (a) for twelve sitting days consecutively of any session of the House of Assembly without the permission of the House entered upon its journals fails to attend in the House; or (ab) is not or ceases to be an Australian citizen; or (b) takes any oath or makes any declaration or acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to any foreign prince or power; or (c) does, concurs in, or adopts any act whereby the member may become a subject or citizen of any foreign state or power; or (e) (f) becomes bankrupt or an insolvent debtor within the meaning of the laws in force in the State relating to bankrupts or insolvent debtors; or becomes a public defaulter; or (g) is attainted of treason; or (h) is convicted of an indictable offence; or (i) becomes of unsound mind, the member's seat in the House of Assembly shall thereby become vacant. (2) The seat of a member of the House of Assembly is not vacated because the member acquires or uses a foreign passport or travel document.

Per the SA Constitution, twelve consecutive sitting days without leave is the limit in the Assembly. (The Council has an identical section.)

A chart showing percentages of votes at the 2021, 2024 and 2025 Tasmanian general elections that were informal for incomplete sequences of preferences.

Missed that the 2025 #politas election report came out last month. Looking at omissions in prefs: No *obvious* bump at only 5 prefs, which was the pre-2024 requirement (and about half had non-6 later numbering) but the bump at only 6 prefs (Senate ATL req) is stark. Similar systems affect formality!

you're just saying this to distract us from the $10,000 tier where the REAL secret posts are

1,137 posts on the blog at time of writing, with a total of 5,624 comments. (85 is the most, on "2016 Tasmania Senate: A Model Of What Might Occur". The fewest is 0, a 298-way tie.) Just for good measure, an update to those charts I made mid-last year:

utter mind-numbing cowardice from the PM

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

unfortunately south of the strait we're having trouble retaining drivers, and are currently two and a half years into a "temporary service adjustment" that reduced frequency pretty much across the board. which of course makes the customerbase crankier, so we're having trouble retaining drivers OH NO

A table of upcoming public Electoral Matters hearings: 27 March 2026 in Canberra 28 April 2026 in Hobart 29 April 2026 in Devonport

The full document is the supplementary to 253 here: www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentar...
I had intended for the two large tables to be separate documents, but they've been concatenated to the main body by the secretariat. Oh well.
The committee is coming down here for a couple of days next month. 5/🧵

- A misunderstanding about how BTL votes are counted (4-page table) - Putting unfolded ballots facedown into an open box is a terrible idea - Online voting is a terrible idea - Loyalty clauses and party primaries are terrible ideas

Constitutional emendment might be a GOOD idea

- A misunderstanding about how BTL votes are counted (4-page table)
- Putting unfolded ballots facedown into an open box is a terrible idea
- Online voting is a terrible idea
- Loyalty clauses and party primaries are terrible ideas
- Constitutional emendment might be a GOOD idea 4/🧵

Borda doesn't solve my proportional House misgivings

Literally circular ballots don't solve anything

You can't just make House divisions cross state borders

Multi-division PPVCs are mostly underresourced, actually

In other ideas other people had:
- Borda doesn't solve my proportional House misgivings
- Literally circular ballots don't solve anything
- You can't just make House divisions cross state borders
- Multi-division PPVCs are mostly UNDERresourced, actually (see also the 66-page table) 3/🧵

A strongly worded message to the Special Minister of State

Scepticism about the practicality of the Tasmania Rule

Further scepticism about the practicality of a proportional House of Representatives

- A strongly worded message to the Special Minister of State
- With apologies to @grugstan.bsky.social (who is probably right about it being necessary) scepticism about the practicality of the Tasmania Rule
- Further scepticism about the practicality of a proportional House of Representatives 2/🧵

Below-the-line voting data for the Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales

Below-the-line voting data for the Northern Territory and Queensland

Below-the-line voting data for South Australia and Tasmania

Below-the-line voting data for the Victoria and Western Australia

My supplemental #JSCEM submission went up today, including a 66-page table of pre-poll voting centre attendance data and a 4-page table (🖼) outlining the rates at which below-the-line Senate votes left their first marked column before marking every box (national rate 17.84%). But also: #auspol 1/🧵

Strike, swinging.

data: URLs - URIs | MDN Data URLs, URLs prefixed with the data: scheme, allow content creators to embed small files inline in documents. They were formerly known as

nope, none at all
developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/W...
oh sorry, i dropped something

increasingly many people don't really give a toss about the whole "you should be voting on election day proper" deal. the answer is clearly NOT compressing them into a tighter timeframe, but good luck convincing anyone in charge of that. #auspol

earlier than i was expecting but glad to see this is out now #auspol

...well now i just want to see what effect it has on the unrelated comic on the other side of the spread

no okay it's just stairs. ...no that's still quite bad.

you can't fool me alt text, that's not the floor, that's... oh god is someone going to push him down an escalator?

The first regular weekly video by @loadingreadyrun.com, "A Brief History of Lame," released on 2003-10-24. The last, "The LoadingReadyRumble 2," released on 2014-12-30. Today in Canada it is 2026-03-07, and that is as far (4,085 days) from Rumble 2 as Rumble 2 was from A Brief History.

"Submission created with AI assistance." Ah, that won't have helped.

Today in #JSCEM nonsense (the second deadline has passed and they're now sifting through the further submissions): Submission 308 claims that preferential voting is actually first-past-the-post, then complains that surplus votes or votes for losers are wasted. Incorrect on both counts. #auspol

...got a paper towel or two handy?

Hey, populism is a proven strategy! ...In non-compulsory first-past-the-post elections.

With Franklin taking in Brighton, you will now be able to reach all five electorates in a day by way of the intercity bus service.

oh no it's harder than that: when a plurality of voters in each state that would have their representation reduced agree, i.e. even later than never

fortunately this came out before i sent off my supplementary submission, because now a strongly worded note is getting chucked in there

oh ffs. "ah yeah let's just handball it off to the next lot." staggeringly shortsighted.

throwing together a supplemental #JSCEM submission based on what i've seen so far, and realising that while on the face of it i don't oppose a proportional voting system in the lower house, generically, there may not be a SPECIFIC system that could actually satisfy me. standards too high. :( #auspol

filed under "things impossible to bring up on the discord server even with context"