Not accountable to voters

It’s great to see the Sentinel-Times trying to get some answers (perhaps even an apology?) from the Victorian Electoral Commission, as to how they stuffed up the number of ballot papers likely to be needed at numerous polling booths in the Bass electorate.

But I fear your chances are negligible at best!  

The VEC is a monopoly government authority, and as such doesn’t consider itself accountable to the citizens of this state.  

Such bodies, and this includes our Local Government Authorities (Shires), are progressively becoming more insular and less accountable to their constituents and this is a very worrying trend.  

At our local government elections last year, the VEC held information sessions as they always do but this time COVID meant that it had to be done online.  

Their eyes lit up at this opportunity to exert control, although I still don’t understand why they felt the urge.  

They ensured that no one knew who else was at the meeting then got us to submit any questions only in writing, which they promptly changed and answered only as they saw fit if at all.

Later candidates submitted their 300-word blurb for the ballot paper and mine had three perfectly legitimate compound modifiers which were hyphenated as they should be.  

I was told that was a sneaky way of getting extra words into the statements and wasn t allowed.  

I cut out three other words to compensate for their problem but that wasn’t good enough:  I was forced to remove the hyphens or have my statement culled.

After the election the VEC sent every candidate a survey to mark their performance.  Most of the questions were irrelevant but there was an opportunity at the end to write what one wanted.  I made a strong plea for someone to contact me to discuss some relevant issues.  

And guess what?  That’s the last I’ve heard from them!

Frank Hirst, Ranceby