If you did want commentry tv3 is streaming live.... click on "what's hot"

[ http://www.tv3.co.nz/listings/index.cfm ]

PS i like Chris Trotter - when we (students) occupied the Uni of Otago Registry ... 2000? he was there and was very helpful, gave a fiery speech ...

There was a somewhat cute drinking game going round... although not too funny. Actually probably the best is that if Russell Brown turns up somewhere it's two drinks. TV3 have put it on their website (link below).

I ummmm think that the registry occupation was like, er, '96, not that either you or I were here then aye cleanie, or that we're still, like, here. Heh. Jim Anderton came I think as well, and got served with a trespass notice....

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//the numbers are making me turn to the cask wine. oh gawd.

early numbers are typically small booths (typically rural), and I suspect if you think back to *cough*canterbury*cough* and small towns, you'll understand why the vote is the way it is. Keep away from the cask. Away from the cask. We have the sparkling shiraz in waiting. Mmmm, red *and* bubbly. would have invited you round here but for the tyranny of distance.

/i'm pretty sure john campbell said 160 km/h a couple of times close to the end purely because of the drinking game.

I loved it so much when he said "just to cut in... oh and that means all you drinking gamers have to drink cos I said that"

It gives me a great idea for movie dvd commentaries...

the whole thing with the plane sounds weird as

Bob "don't mention the nob" Clarkson sure has done well.
10000 vote turn around, this will give analysts plenty of work.

//Bob "don't mention the nob" Clarkson sure has done well.
//10000 vote turn around, this will give analysts plenty of work.
and the courts, this was what I was scared of, that it would be so close and the 3rd party vote would collapse, that it would come down to the Tauranga seat and as we know Peters will always contest in the courts.

//people are playing off their electoral votes against their party votes.
yes I ws noticing that all over the place, that the electorate vote was in conflict with the party vote, this is going to make '08 very interesting

And by golly, maybe delspence rushing off to make that vote will make all the difference and what if Peters does get his seat back throu the courts.

Is it true that the only thing parties are allowed to do on election day is offer rides to get people to voting booths?

It's not even 24 hours - it's 19. It ends at 7pm when the polls close.

I'm all for it. I mean, no one wants to be accosted by crazy party supports with loudhailers and balloons on their way to the polling booth. It's pleasingly peaceful today.

// I mean, no one wants to be accosted by crazy party supports with loudhailers and balloons on their way to the polling booth.

Yet in Australia, that's what you get. People giving you fliers as you enter the polling booth, the whole deal. Liberals last election ran out dressed in green asking people if they're interested in environmental issues, handing out fliers for their candidate. All kinds of shit.

Yep.

Well, if it applies everywhere else, why shouldn't it apply on the internet? I can't imagine why they'd make a law saying "no campaigning on election day" and then change it when blogs got popular to include "....except for the internet". It's not like they have to call in noise control every time someone starts campaigning, just in case they're not doing it so loudly as to break the law.

if you want to make a case for devising speparate legislation for newsprint media, that's well within your power, but i'm more concerned about the internet here. due to it's relative isolation outside the realms of the public domain. bearing in mind that the internet is an international entity while a newspaper must be geographically located, there are unlimited ways that any law banning online freedom of speech (especially non-defammatory freedom of speech) can be subverted with the framework of existing international laws and various methods of distribution available.

//Or will you just keep coming up with new things every time your old argument falls over

it's not a new argument. it's an elaboration on point 2; 'click yourself through the procedure'
which is explicit in rendering the power your digits have over the technology in that you can click web pages, applications or equipment on or off in a binary manner.

the recency effect is of little weight in this. you asume that messages/spam on election day would be one sided (therefore disadvantaging the other sides) which would certainly not be the case, it'd be flowing in all directions, viewed in different orders by different people. unlike most more linear media, the internet is less prone to standard sequentiality in the ways it is both presented and read.

but really LG, don't talk to me about memory phenomena and voting-
voting is not a memory thing. find me someone who you know for sure has turned up at the polling both without an idea of who to vote 4.
people don't turn up and try to organize their minds at that point
how many people reading this weren't sure who they'd vote for until the day of the election?
i'd suggest a minority.
how many people voted differently than they'd foreseen they would 24 hours prior?
i suggest few. dispute that.
the ideaological basis behind democracy on an individual level stands against everything you're saying, you didn't vote solely with your memory limegreen, you voted on the basis of emotional persuasion rendered over a certain period of time the least volatile/important part of which was that final 20 or so hours before you 'communicated' with your country.

you could perceive the vote counting procedure to be a communicative act but the message (as opposed to the language) was not intended for the vote counter. this counter is a receptor for the electoral system yet your message is not intended for the electoral system it's intended for the an unknown/indistinguishable entity=the powers that be. you can call this communicative, but the definition of communicative defies the reality in this case. a prayer to god is not a communicative act, it can be perceived as such, but the one sidedness of these efforts don't satisfy the true methodology behind the defining 'commune' which makes up half the word.

basically your argument is weakened by this;

//it seems like a good and worthy thing to do all in your power to reduce social influence to nil for polling

because this election has been neither good nor worthy in the manner it's been contested
politicians have never been widely regarded as good or worthy people
and these illusions- goodness and worthiness
should have no bearing on our right to freedom of speech.

I had a much longer answer, but I'll keep this short.

1. I don't think you understand what Freedom of Speech is. You're taking it too literally. It isn't the right to say whatever you want, whenever you want. (see the link below for some sort of start on a definition). Consider it like the isolation of jurors while they're deliberating.

2. Voting is communication, whether you like it or not. It transfers a meaning from the voter to the counter, to the powers that be, and ultimately back to everybody in aggregate form.

3. "goodness and worthiness" related to the aim, not politicians, the election, or anything to do with that.

4. I made up my mind on the day, and have changed my mind on the day in the past.

5. While numerically few, the 10-20%, so-called "swing" voters (those who make up their mind very late in the piece) ultimately make the decision. Most people do vote the same every time, but it's the people that change their vote that influence the result. At least some of them will make up their mind on the day.

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lime greenm you sound like- "you want the truth-you can't handle the truth"
thanks or replying noizyboy

//Do you think that sort of statement, given the circumstances, and whether it was true or not, might affect the way some people would cast their vote?

i think that it would affect voting, and i don't see a problem with voting being affected in the last 24 hours seeing as pepole have been manipulated by all manner of shit for the last few months. if people are swayed without being able to take things with grains of salt-(particularly via the net) then 24 hours won't make the least bit of difference to what if motivating their fundamental mindset in placing a vote at all.
if i read that online on election day-and i'm thinking specifically of message boards i'd be no more swayed than when i read any of the polls that'd been published in the previous weeks.

// if i read that online on election day...
// at 11:17pm on voting day on the same message board...
// i'd be no more swayed than when i read any of the polls...

likewise.

but my comments weren't specifically limited to internet messageboards. If the midday news ran the same story (the 'Hide is doomed' story, using dodgy exit poll information), and that info was disseminated via radio, web and whatever else, then that might, in my opinion, change the way people were intending to vote. Messageboards might not hold much weight and/or influence, but the national news networks certainly do.

I just think that once the voting has started, it's fair enough that people stop speculating and campaigning for the day. Not everyone is as immune to outside influence as hardened web-forum dwellers.

// lime greenm you sound like- "you want the truth-you can't handle the truth"

Not even, au. I gave you a link on the concept of Freedom of Speech, and if you have read it, it don't show. And if you don't agree with it, you haven't pointed out how its irrelevant. I could rebut you point but point, but I grow tired of you not evening thinking outside your square.

could be cool

//but i'm not considering changing anything for radio or any other media that could influence people more aggressively, just the concept of setting up a quiet little electronic backroom where people can (legally) scoff and cuss as they regret their ill considered swing votes could be cool

First of all I doubt that the government would go to any great lengths to do a hatchet-job on anyone that made a wee comment on a blog somewhere. However, if the law was adjusted so that it explicitly excluded such internet behaviour, then that immediately gives all the political campaigners room to start spewing forth from their soapboxes on the day, which undermines the original intent of the law in the first place.

simply this limegreen
freedom of speech
not wikipedia's or anyone elses convenient definition
strangely this definition will change as the term is altered under newer and more progressive policies, so while you can quote the site with great accuracy and i'm sure relevant quotes
you are only reiterating what they said 'freedom of speech is'
not what freedom of speech could, should, might be or has been
it's not a concrete thing
and look around you
nothing is as free as it could, should, might be or has been

wikipedia does not define my definition of shit-it's a reference
you can be set free son
just do like this
find somewhere comfortable to relax
let your breathing slow
as you exhale, in your mind see the word "freedom" let it fill your mind feel the word and the concept, what does the word really mean?
as you inhale try to allow the change in the air's direction to take on a smooth circular arc
so that the inhale melds into the exhale
next exhale feel/see/ - the word "of"
inhale
exhale "speech"

do for fifteen minutes and don't talk to me about boxes