Welcome to Project Mandamus

Friday 2008-03-28T0950 This web site is now approaching the shape needed for work on the case. Make the folder work/internal/ your home page and explore its subfolders thoroughly. It is intended to become the breakdown of work that needs to be done on various  aspects of the case. The Site Map at top right corner of every page gives a good overview but focus on that portion of the Site Map under Work and then under Internal

Especially see Tasks and Timeline.

Sunday 2008-03-16T1740 See News and Events for Monash meeting 4:30 p.m. tomorrow (Monday).

• Register as new user and login to see Recent Changes ("What's New") on right below Upcoming Events and Calendar.

• On every page see Site Map at top right corner to find your way around.
• See "bread crumbs" starting with "Your are here: Home" under the "Home" Tab near top left of every page to see how you got down to wherever you are and how to go back up to "Home" one level at a time.
• See Explorer style folder tree view on left of most pages to see what part of the Site Map is nearby and click to go there directly.

If you still don't know what to do after browsing around that's because  nobody else has figured out what you should do either. So:

• make something up that might be useful for you to do
• pick  a good place to put it (eg Tasks if you have been added to the active group so you can see that folder), or your own "My Folder" next to your login name at top right of every page if you haven't been added yet.
• use the "Add new" drop down menu on every folder to Add a new page (or subfolder) and describe what you are doing or just do it.
• when you click save it will become visible only to members of group "active" (the other volunteer law students)
• when you think its ready to include in public pages or documents to be filed and served, use the "Actions" drop down menu on the page to "Submit" it for publication
• your work will then appear on the "Review" list (below "Recent changes" on right of most pages)
• if you edit existing pages - published or not - please always use "Checkout" from the Actions drop down menu, then "Checkin" when finished. This preserves the previous version as well as your new version.

 
Thursday 2008-03-06T1158 Background sub-section now established to avoid getting distracted by a new project, Go there if you are just curious and are not a lawyer or law student interested in helping. Stay here if you are. Distraction dealt with by noon the following day. Still on schedule. 

Wednesday 2008-03-05T2306 I'm too tired at the moment to attempt to explain the inexplicable events earlier today. Some background on inexplicable behaviour by the Australian Electoral Commission, the Australian Government Solicitors and the courts can be found at http://www.voteneither.net/

Not sure how accurate that web site is. I'll try to setup another section of this web site for some analysis of it from my own perspective (as well as other sections for many other things I am far more interested in). Meanwhile this section remains focussed on urgent legal preparations for forcing them to allow free elections to be held and to pay exemplary damages for refusing to do so.

Send lawyers, guns and money.

Dent v Australian Electoral Commission & Anor [2007] FCA 1991 (14 December 2007)

The judgment of Gordon J we are appealing from.

Dent v Australian Electoral Commission & Anor [2007] FCA 1698 (1 November 2007)

Interlocutory judgment of Ryan J in the same proceedings relied on in the above judgment which includes the most important facts.

Dent v AEC & Anor  Jessup J [2007] FCA 2112 (1 November 2007 ) (unpublished - certified 2008-03-07)

Oral application at 4pm following rejection of nomination at noon. Reasons were not available until 7 March 2008 but orders made were relied on by Gordon J.

Dent and Daryl Wight as an Australian Electoral Officer [2007] AATA 1985 (23 November 2007)

AAT decision made by Deputy President Forgie on the day before polling day in the last Federal Elections, also relied on in the above judgment of Gordon J.

Court Registry

Here's the Federal Court of Australia appeal file for VID 52 of 2008

(callover heard, index settlement 5 March, hearing before Full Court 19 May).

Here's the file for the earlier proceedings VID 982 of 2007

that were summarily dismissed by Gordon J in the judgment above.

Transcripts, Notice of Appeal etc etc will be in the Work folder.

Get started

First, join this website as a new user by registering online. You need to provide a valid email address. A link will be emailed to that address so that you can click the link to complete your membership and change your login password. This provides you with a personal folder within which you can manage your own web site and will enable you to request notifications of new material by email etc.

Simply joining as a member does not provide you with much more access than the general public of anonymous browsers but does enable you to add comments, personalize your view, more easily keep track of what's new and have your own member's folder where you are in charge.

Then send your email address and phone numbers and hours to newvolunteers@arthurdent.info

Nicolas Dour (nd) is coordinating and will add your name to the group "active" which ensures you can add to and edit stuff in the Work folder and below. This is visible by all and editable by other members of group "active" and is where we organize the project and the web site.

ND will also arrange to get you a complete copy of the Bound Collection of ALL documents (currently pp1-453) which tells you everything there is  to know about the  Federal Court of Australia Full Court Appeal case you  will be working on.

Meanwhile please  carefully read the judgments we are appealing  against and  the current  "Notice of  Appeal".

There hasn't been time available to help anyone figure out what they can do to help up to Thursday 27 March due to ridiculous hassles over index settlement. Now the web site is starting to take shape enough for people who want to help to be able to find things to do and places to put them. Coming soon... some sort of overview of what the case is about and what work needs to be done.

But its only coming soon if people who are reading this web site (and the Bound Collection of hardcopy documents) to find out what the case is about and what work needs to be done use the information in it to start drafting more palatable overviews for others as well as more specific documents to file and serve.

If you can help, do.

As of Friday 28 March we now have a luxurious 7 weeks before the Full Court hearing on 19 May. That's much less of a rush than up to now. But most of the work still has to be done within the next 3 to 4 weeks to meet deadlines for filing and serving in advance. Detailed Chronology, Outline of submissions (30pp), and lists of legislation, cases and other materials etc. must be ready by 5 May and Affidavits, Notices etc a week earlier. When that's done we'll know exactly what work needed to be done because the other side will be telling the judges we haven't done it. Meanwhile there's no choice but to learn to swim by swimming.

Get comfortable

We suggest you do one or more of the following:

• Learn to swim by swimming. See Help tab.
  
• You can do anything in your individual member folder that anyone running a web site as a whole can do for the site as a whole. That's the way both to learn and to propose how we organize. Then move it to the common Work folder (see the Tab labelled "Work" at the top of every page).
• Post replies or messages and links to stuff you want to draw attention to in our main email list volunteers@arthurdent.info
• Any messages posted there go to everyone involved together with your email address. Add your phone number so others can call to work with you. Replies now go only to the sender of the message being replied to, not to the whole list.
  
• Phone each other and get together to work on drafts of anything you think needs drafting or re-drafting. Post your work as comments added to the version online, new documents in the same folder, new sub-folders or edits to existing drafts (after checking out the current draft and checking in your revised version so a copy of the original is automatically preserved).
  

Make it your own

Additional Tabs and corresponding folders will be setup at the top level of the "official" released, published, filed, served, perused and what have you Appeal Book, Documents Register, Chronology etc together with workflows for drafting, reviewing and approving etc. Meanwhile just don't worry about it. Nothing you do in the Work folder is "official" and anything you checkout and change can be fixed.

Learn to feel ok about using the "checkout" action to edit a document and propose your improvements and then use the "checkin" to replace the original version with your very own mistakes and blunders. Its ok, the previous version will still be available and can be restored easily if your edits did not improve it.

If you are nervous about that, try it yourself in your own individual member folder where you know the documents are just yours to do as you see fit with. You can also install additional website facilities there, such as your own blog, custom views, databases etc without fear of disrupting the main site.