Politics

Julian Assange to run for office

Josh Peterson Tech Editor
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Julian Assange, founder and editor in chief of WikiLeaks, will run for the Australian senate as the head of the newly founded WikiLeaks Party.

Assange’s supporters, including his father, handed in his application Wednesday to the Australian Electoral Commission in Melbourne, reported Australian publication The Age on Thursday.

Opinion polls conducted in 2012 by UMR Research determined that Assange could be a competitive senate candidate. UMR is the same company Australia’s Labor Party uses to conduct its internal polls.

Currently living in asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, “Mr Assange has indicated that if elected and unable to return to Australia to take up a seat in the senate, a WikiLeaks Party nominee would fill the vacancy,” reported The Age.

Assange has been avoiding extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault charges.

Both he and his supporters believe that if he went to Sweden, he would be extradited to the U.S. to answer for the publication of thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables, as well as classified documents on the Iraq and Afghan wars, in late 2010.

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