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Friday 13 August 2010

Post#156 A Guide to Australian Election Terminology (Part 2)

Here's a few more terms. These are more in the colloquial strain.

1. Stooge: Natural person or other entity secretly acting on behalf of another candidate.

2. Stooge Party: Usually has a misleading name and is intended to draw votes away from a rival and funnel those votes via preference distribution to its masters in the main party. An example would be a party with a name such as "Forest Defence Party" which is actually owned by the lumber industry. It would pull votes from the genuine Green Party and transfer them via preferences to the Liberal or National Party. A "Small Business Advance Party" could, conversely, stooge for the Labor Party, drawing votes from the Liberals.

3. Stooge Candidate: represents the stooge party or runs as a bogus independent. Usually has their candidate's deposit paid by the sponsoring party.

Stooging has been subjected to various attempts at curtailment. The requirement for parties to have 500 members to qualify for putting their name on the ballot paper has made the practice less common. The other trick of having a stooge candidate change their name by deed poll to something sloganish (E.g. Mr John Savetheforests) has been thwarted by requiring natal names or chosen names used for a significant period to be shown on the candidate's application. Stooges now try to raise their profiles by false-friending real candidates and slipstreaming their publicity.

2 comments:

Anastasia F-B said...

Retarius, totally off topic, but I thought I'd just say how much I like the new layout. :-)

Retarius said...

Yes, some of these new templates are quite good. I thought the old one was not too user-friendly. The colour-contrast wasn't clear.