Report on investigation of election irregularities

Call for a New Election because of serious procedural corruption in the last election make current National Committee illegitimate (Scroll down for the Explanation of the crisis) 1. Members of SPA need to call for a new election to be held and to be managed by an external organisation Bicycle Victoria uses an external agency to conduct its elections. [INSERT LINK to page by Ilan describing this procedure and agency] We suggest that this as a model, but other suggestions for external managers are welcome. 2. SPA Members also need to ensure that the external agency has possession of a legitimate membership list with one vote per membership. 3. SPA Members need to appoint an interim committee to organise that election. 4. SPA Member volunteers who would like to discuss these matters have a Constitutional right to call for general meetings in each State for this purpose. Members of SPA should address calls for change to the SPA National Committee by using the SPA Bulletin Board at popforum.candobetter.org as well as emails and letters. Please ensure that copies go to:

SPA Victoria PO Box 1173 Frankston Vic 3199

... so that you and we can monitor the process. Explanations This Report

• aims to inform members of serious ongoing problems in SPA which are unfair, improper, and prevent and discourage participation and action
• encourages members to place pressure on National and state committees to deal with these SPA problems,
• specifies achievable reforms which must be made to eliminate these problems and permit SPA to function in a healthy and useful manner in accordance with its aims

The second section, "What you can do", is designed to give clear ways for members to respond and participate in an ongoing way and to correspond with each other and on the Candobetter forum as well as the SPA Governance forum as well as by formal complaint at popforum.candobetter.org. A major objective would be to have large meetings of branch SPA members in all branches and to have next year's SPA move back from Canberra to Victoria where it was originally scheduled to be held. Also, SPA needs to restructure itself so that members of the National Committee are directly elected at branch AGM's as suggested by West Australian SPA member Paddy Weaver earlier this year. After the experience of the grossly improper interference in the conduct of the 2007 ballot, to be described further below, we believe that this may be the only guarantee against a recurrence of this. This report is placed on web site candobetter.org maintained by SPA member James Sinnamon, along with the photofiles cited as evidence for certain statements and a hard copy will be posted to the members. We encourage members to post this report on to the National Committee and their State committees demanding that the suggested actions be taken. Specific Irregularities

1. The number of voters on the membership list was inflated between the time of the last one issued to Ilan Goldman and the time of the election by giving 'households' more than one vote, up to, four votes in some households. See Rules and Discussion of interpretations [Evidence: photo-records of the membership list checked off by the scrutineers at the last national election.] LINK NEEDED
   1. These votes per household were established by unknown means and the [illegal] possibility of multiple votes per household was not made known to the entire electorate.
   2. Most of the people who would have voted for the team led by Sheila Newman would have been unaware of this 'opportunity' and did not avail themselves of it.
   3. The outcome from this was to boost votes from those in the know.
   4. Since none of the team which lost were in the know, it can be assumed that these votes went to our opposition.
   5. We consider this to be corrupt and to have probably contributed to the count against us.
   6. The Victorian mailing list has since been artificially bloated by this means to an extra 40 or 50 members, all only paying a single membership fee.
2. Returning officer, Simon Baltais, took possession by force and subterfuge of a locked bag full of votes held in James Sinnamon's name for the National election and had them unsupervised for around 20 hours, overnight, whilst also in possession of the key(s) and lock(s).
   1. Baltais's actions were contrary to written and agreed procedure which was that the key and the locked bag would not come together without witnesses - for reasons which should be obvious. Mr Baltais was well aware of this agreement and had formally chosen to be in possession of the key and to leave the locked bag to be picked up by James Sinnamon. [Evidence: relevant correspondence on SPA National Committee and between Simon & others, and statement from the Manager of the Post Office where the locked bag was held.]
   2. Mr Baltais obtained the locked bag by telling the Manager of the Post Office in question that he had the authority of the formal, contractual owner of the locked bag, James Sinnamon, to collect it. [Evidence: Photo-record of contract between James Sinnamon and Australia Post] There are many documents to show that Mr Baltais had been expressly denied that authority by Mr Sinnamon and that he was hostile to the some of the candidates. [Evidence: Correspondence about the arrangements where Baltais shows ambivalence and correspondence between Baltais and ?Mcindoe where Baltais condemns our mail-out to members using poor legal information] The Manager of the Post Office has made a written statement that Mr Baltais misled him into believing that he had James Sinnamon's permission in order to get the bag. [Evidence: Photo-record of Post Office Manager\u2019s statement]
   3. Mr Baltais, as the owner of all keys and lock(s) of the locked bag, was in a position to easily open the bag and to close it again without anyone being able to detect this. [Relevant correspondence]
   4. Mr Baltais took no effective measure to demonstrate that he did not interfere or allow others to interfere with the locked bag although had he done so the consequences might not have been so dreadful. [He gave some keys to another person, Deb Henry and he stated that his action was to avoid Sinnamon being cast under suspicion, but the first action guaranteed nothing and the second statement is undermined by Simon\u2019s undertakings to the Committee and by the fact that his possession of the bag was a clear endangerment of security.]
   5. Mr Baltais attempted to convince people that James Sinnamon, by retaining the locked bag, had more opportunity to interfere with it than Mr Baltais himself, which is demonstrably not true and represents an outrageous injury to Mr Sinnamon.
   6. Gordon Hocking and Ian Macindoe (who both benefited from Mr Baltais's fraudulent actions) congratulated Mr Baltais on them. Dr Coulter, who also benefited, attacked me for questioning this corrupt process. [Opposite reactions would be expected in an election where fairness and being seen to be open and just was a priority.]
   7. While the locked bag was unsupervised for 20 hours prior to the election votes could have been photocopied and new ones added as members of these households, as well as votes being changed by photocopying signatures etc but changing the marks in the boxes. In this way the results of the election could have been contrived.
   8. If Simon Baltais purchased two locks and retained one, when he took the bag from the post office, he could have broken the (very fragile lock) and have substituted a new lock for which he had given two keys to Deb Henry which she then handed back at his request at the AGM where he opened the bag in front of witnesses. One key, which could have been for a different lock, remained with Australia Post.
   9. The weighing of the bag was interrupted by the removal of the bag by the returning officer from Australia Post and the next weighing was on different scales and the Australia Post records of the last weighing were not available.
   10. The then President, Ian Macindoe was aware of what Simon Baltais had done and had a duty to see that Baltais had nothing more to do with the election. Yet Baltais was one of the scrutineers and was even allowed to continue as a kind of master of ceremonies. At no stage did he offer to remove himself. He was loud in preventing the candidates from observing the process of scrutineering even though he knew that they had deep concerns about what was going on. At one stage a candidate opposed to Sheila Newman's team, Gordon Hocking, was allowed to remain standing at the vote counting table for about 10 minutes whilst chatting with Baltais, and Newman's objections to this were completely unheeded.

What have we already tried to do about this? We attempted to get assistance from the ACT department which administers the regulations which affect SPA elections but they told us we would have to go to court; there is very little help out there for NG0s. We have attempted to raise these issues only to be met by a barrage of discouraging remarks, accusing James Sinnamon and myself and those who openly support us, of continuing with the same complaints, "month after month" (e.g. Diane Proctor on Fri 7/13/2007 4:04 PM, in reply to "Congratulations SPA National Committee"), as if we were still complaining about the procedural corruption in last years election, whereas we are now complaining (in addition) of even worse corruption in this year's election. None of these problems has been adequately addressed so naturally we continue to complain. We have asked that past President Ian Macindoe make public the complaints he has received from SPA members about the conduct of the election and his own conduct leading up to it, without result. We have asked for the correspondence from our two oldest trustees on their reasons for resigning just prior to the election to be made available but these requests have been ignored. Our concerns have not been properly acknowledged, investigated, or answered. When we have raised them the response has been

1. to ask us to leave [Evidence: Emails from John Coulter and others]
2. to tell us rudely not to raise them [Popforum correspondence/Diane Proctor/Tom Nilsson/Anna Guinea]
3. to tell us to raise them with the National Committee (cynical advice under the circumstances) [Jenny Goldie]
4. to heckle, harass, defame us etc [Jill Curnow, Gordon Hocking, Diane Proctor, David Lankshear (known as 'Eclipse')]
5. on the substance of the issues silence in most cases, lies in many, rationalizations at times [Responses by John Coulter to me on popforum]

Failure of SPA National Committee to acknowledge or redress complaints People have repeatedly excused the failure to deal with these matters by citing a fear that SPA will fall apart if it is investigated. By not dealing with these concerns SPA is severely dysfunctional. There is hardly anyone left to do the work we have to do. We have no national banners, no national pamphlets, no national posters. Everything is amateur, often half-finished. Yet the people who have assumed the role of the National Committee under Dr John Coulter as President are planning to spend $15-20,000 on a conference in Canberra to 'celebrate' SPA's 20th anniversary at the AGM (which was due to be held in Victoria), without any attention, moreover, to organising a proper election this time. *The election should be outsourced!* [LINK TO SUGGESTION FOR USING BICYCLE VICTORIA'S METHOD ... Get Ilan to write it up.] People have suggested that the 'losers' should resign instead of questioning the corruption. Apparently just running in opposition in an election has been enough to justify our total exclusion from SPA in the minds of some. We take this as another sign of corruption and this is another complaint about the running of the organization. People should be encouraged to speak out and to fearlessly support open and fair procedures. The corruption, which has affected the election processes and outcomes, needs to be stopped in order to give members everywhere a much greater opportunity to participate and represent SPA. Whilst I concede that angry remarks have issued from both sides, I do not think that my conduct, and certainly not James Sinnamon's, or anyone else on my side, has benefited from crooked actions or purposefully harassed and disenfranchised anyone, especially not in a deceitful and corrupt way. I have personally answered such accusations (most recently in letters replying to John Coulter on the now defunct and destroyed PopulationForum) and my replies have gone completely unacknowledged. Where there was a response to my replies, the response ignored the content of my replies. We have always been willing to answer questions. We have also always attempted to deal with evidence and encourage honest discussion, but we have been attacked for this and attempts were made to frame us as aggressors on the PopulationForum (now closed, but not because we were ashamed, because the perpetrators were ashamed) and elsewhere, and behind our backs by telephone trees and email, at national and state level. We have tried not to personalize issues, but have attempted to bring out facts of considerable importance to the running of SPA. Specific concerns and recommendations you might consider:

1. that Simon Baltais's actions be condemned and that he resign from office and from SPA, that those who have supported his actions resign from the committee and possibly from the organization - or at the very least that all those people apologise and step down pending review by the next AGM of their activities,
2. that those who inflated the voter list be found out and made to account publicly for their actions to the voters,
3. that an interim committee without presidential privileges be created (how, needs to be worked out),
4. that the next election should be held in Victoria as scheduled, instead of in Canberra, where the opportunity for the same people to continue rorting will be much easier,
5. on a restructure of the organization along the lines that Paddy Weaver suggested [INSERT LINK TO WEAVER SUGGESTED RESTRUCTURE] would avoid the risk of this scale of corruption continuing,
6. that the committee should stand up for people who give evidence for their statements and condemn the group of bullies who harass them without any evidence for their jibes and insults,
7. that a statement about all of these wrongs should be made to the membership,
8. that Dr Mcindoe reimburse the SPA funds he used to finance a letter full of inaccuracies, biased assertions, and frank misrepresentation, about the team he was competing against and which he signed as President,
9. that Gordon Hocking resign over his circularized letter representing a so-called "SPA Rescue" group especially in the light of his hypocritical protests that the mailing list was being abused and his apparent feeding of inaccurate and biased information in which certain persons e.g. Dave Lankshear (Eclipse, found reason to attack James Sinnamon, Greg Wood and Sheila Newman when they posted to the [defunct]PopulationForum,
10. that a statement condemning Mr Hocking\u2019s interference in having a nomination cut-off date for the last election and other improper behaviour,
11. on an enquiry into the possibility that Mr Hocking encouraged Simon Baltais to interfere with the votes, and
12. on the details of the SPA Trustees resignations being made available to the State Branch offices and to the membership.