http://fruitsandvotes.com The Weblog of Matthew S. Shugart Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:40:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Australia's Labor and Green parties have reached a support agreement. The Greens won their first House of Representatives seat at the recent election. One seat, out of 150, on over 11% of first-preference votes. One of the provisions of the agreement is that Green Senator Bob Brown will reintroduce as a ... http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=4225 At the port of Akko, Israel (29 July 2010). http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=4221 We had an outage lasting 18 hours or so, caused by some problem at the host. Once things were up and running again, I finally replaced the finca photo in the banner. I figured it was about time I stopped having what is now someone else's house on my blog. http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=4219 Independent Senators are reminding the two contending PM candidates in Australia not to forget the second chamber. In particular, this could be a problem for a potential Labor minority government. Labor does not control the upper house, which has 32 Labor senators, 37 Coalition, five Greens, Senator Xenophon and Senator Fielding. ... http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=4212 As earlier this year in the UK, one of the demands to have surfaced in coalition/support negotiations resulting from the lack of a parliamentary majority has been the possibility of fixing in law the date of the next election: And [Prime Minister Julia Gillard] promised to serve a full term and ... http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=4208 ABC is only slightly less dramatic than F&V: Australia's political future hangs in the hands of a disparate gang of four independents and one Greens MP. The linked item has backgrounds of the MPs whose support is being wooed by the top two party leaders. http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=4205 The news today, one day before Australia's general election, is full of speculation (and the predictable angst) over whether Australia could have a parliament in which no party has a majority. As the NZ Herald notes: Most analysts expect the Greens to hold the balance of power in the Senate after ... http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=4200 In my (almost) daily watching of Mosaic TV, I saw some familiar street views yesterday morning--a street corner I was on just a couple of weeks ago. The controversy over the Mamilla Cemetery has flared again, as described in the JPost: Despite what city officials have called “clear and indisputable evidence” ... http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=4191 This is a great program, as reported in Haaretz. Growing up in the West Bank, Mujahid Sarsur knew next to nothing about the Holocaust and saw little ground to sympathize with a people he saw as his occupier. But thanks to an Israeli roommate overseas, the 21-year-old Palestinian student learned about ... http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=4184 As readers of this blog know, I am a fan of these "quiz" sites where you respond to some questions and it calculates your proximity to the various political parties in a given country's election campaign. I took the one for Australia, and it told me I coincide 62.5% with Labor, ... http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=4182