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Court to announce Culleton replacement

The High Court and not the AEC will announce the candidate who will replace former One Nation senator Rod Culleton after a special count in Perth.

Former One Nation Senator Rod Culleton
The High Court will announce the candidate who will replace former One Nation senator Rod Culleton. (AAP)

The electoral commission won't be announcing who will replace Rod Culleton as a senator, but rather will leave it to the High Court.

The AEC will on Tuesday conduct a special count in Perth to identify which candidate will take over the West Australian seat vacated by Mr Culleton.

But the AEC said in a statement that once the count is completed, the result will be "provided to the High Court for its consideration".

"The AEC will be issuing no public announcement of the result of the special count while this matter is before the court," the commission said.

The High Court last month found the former One Nation senator was not eligible to run for parliament because of a larceny conviction which carried a jail sentence of more than a year.

It's expected Mr Culleton, who later had the conviction quashed, will be replaced by the next-placed candidate on the One Nation ticket, his brother-in-law Peter Georgiou.

The special count, which is expected to run for an hour and conclude around 2pm AEDT, will not require the manual handling of any Senate ballot papers.

The AEC will instead use the voter preference data already taken from the ballot papers of votes cast at the 2016 WA Senate election.

Voter preferences for Mr Culleton will be disregarded and counted to the next preferred candidate recorded on each ballot paper, with subsequent preferences to be treated accordingly.

Once this is completed, a distribution of preferences will then occur.

While scrutineers will be able to observe the process, journalists and members of the public are banned.

It is expected once the count is finalised the electoral commission will file a summons in the High Court in Perth.

The summons will seek the court's declaration of the candidate.

It will then be up to Justice Patrick Keane to deliver a decision.


2 min read

Published

Source: AAP



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