Threads on electoral reform:http://www.ozpolitic.com/electoral-reform/current-debates.html
Now this is interesting - a debate about our constitution!
Prisoner challenges jail vote banhttp://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Prisoner-challenges-jail-vote-ban/2007/04/25/1177459768161.html
A Victorian prisoner will challenge in the High Court laws that ban jail inmates from voting.
The case, brought by Vickie Lee Roach, 48, will be heard in June and could eventually win back the right to vote for Australia's prisoners, Fairfax newspapers report on Wednesday.
Roach is being held in the Dame Phyllis Frost Women's Prison at Deer Park.
She was jailed for at least four years in 2004 for negligently causing serious injury in a car accident, the report said.
Roach would argue that Commonwealth Electoral Act provisions which barred prisoners from voting in federal elections were unconstitutional, Fairfax said.
The ban was introduced last year in legislative changes that shortened the period people can enrol to vote after an election is called from seven days to three days, and required them to provide proof of identity when enrolling or updating their enrolment.
Previously, only prisoners serving sentences of more than five years were barred from voting.
Barristers Ron Merkel QC and Michael Pearce SC, leading corporate law firm Allens Arthur Robinson and the non-profit Human Rights Law Resource Centre were acting free of charge for Roach, Fairfax said.
Roach's High Court application said the laws breached sections of the constitution that said parliament should be "directly chosen by the people", and unlawfully breached implied constitutional freedoms of political participation and political communication.
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