Polling Day : The Zombies Are Coming!

[rattfan]

I'm actually interested in politics. I just have a low tolerance for idiots and unfortunately the two seem to go together often. So I spent a couple of hours last night preparing my vote, since I don't like to vote a straight party ticket (one tick above the line) and because a lot of minor parties emerge like mushrooms on polling day and I have no idea who or what they are.

In Australia voting is compulsory, so one might as well get good at it. I studied politics in high school, where it was just beginning to be taught as a school subject, and I can still hear the voice of my politics teacher warning that he'd haunt us if we ever donkey-voted. We visited Parliament, discussed international relations, wars and politicians, went to hear them speak and so on. I went on to study it some more as part of my degree; more international and national politics. Some of that knowledge is still useful today in my court transcribing job. I tried for Foreign Affairs but could never quite crack it. :-(

Anyway, all that means I take it seriously. Also that I enjoy destroying the system in a virtual sense by writing apocalypse fiction, but that's a side benefit. This time is special because it's the result of a double dissolution, where we have to elect a whole new House of Reps and Senate. 30 years since we had one of those.

So, off to vote this morning.

House of Reps is easy. Five candidates, bang, done.

The Senate now.....The ballot was big enough to make a display banner out of and thank Gods we don't have to number all of them now, just 12 out of the 79 candidates. That was hard enough, but it was vastly easier because I'd already checked everyone out online and worked out my 12. Ended up being 15, but anyway. Some of the parties I find anathema, some are just....strange. A lot are one issue parties better described as lobby groups. There's the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers. If you're not any of these things, they've got nothing for you. Palmer United Party. If you're not Clive Palmer, they've got nothing....you get it. Australian Antipaedophile Party. Laudable sentiments but again, that's a lobby group. And the Health Australia Party is a deceptively innocuous-looking group which campaigns against people being vaccinated. I should thank them; they've given me an idea for a story involving the kick off for a really impressive plague.

Comments

[merilune.livejournal.com]

Like you I am interested in politics but I feel like we are fairly screwed and only a miracle can change the country. I did the pre vote research too but it was still astounding to see how much crap was on the paper that was bigger than the bloody booth. I can imagine many people sketching a dick and calling it a day.

I thought the same of a lot of those parties - most of them have nothing for me. And that Health Australia Party!! What a deceptive as heck name... I can imagine many people voting for that not realising what they actually stand for. It's scary.

[ratfan.livejournal.com]

It is scary. I only found out what the Health mob were by accident; someone posted the info and I happened to glance at it.

Usually they call the election before WA has even finished voting, but they may not, this time. As a friend said, it's an unusual election. Due to shifting of boundaries, my electorate of Perth is considered one of the deciders. It was a safe Labor seat; now, not so much.

Hope no one grabbed you and asked you to work! Tell them you won't be any good to them if you're exhausted.

[merilune.livejournal.com]

Likewise, I happened to see something about the Health mob on an anti-anti-vaccine page I follow on Facebook.

Now we just wait and see...

Thankfully they found staff yesterday. I'm working this weekend and Mon-Wed but it shouldn't be too bad. I hope work is treating you well!

[sue-bursztynski.livejournal.com]

Yes, there were a lot of horrible parties with innocuous-sounding names. I did my research - there were 116 Senate Candidates in Victoria and eight standing in my electorate. I couldn't research all 116 candidates but I did research the parties. In my own electorate I did research all the candidates. Yeesh! One was a disgraced former doctor who got kicked off the register for stuff he had done in his medical career; apparently, he's been trying to get into politics for the last several years and I gather that, fortunately, he only got a couple of hundred votes last time. I've been happy with my local member, but he did some truly stupid things in the last couple of weeks that might have lost him votes. And it's a marginal electorate anyway. I might wake up tomorrow and find myself represented by a Tory! (Facepalm).

I found a very handy web site called Cluey Voter to help you vote below the line. (I did 30). You ticked how you felt about each party - very strongly for, against, a bit for/against or left it at the default "don't care". That gave you a suggested voting order, which you could fiddle with if you wanted, then print out. It meant not having to think about it too much in the booth.

[blackrabbit42.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! I had no idea voting was compulsory in Australia, how do they enforce that?

In the US, we also have medical groups that give themselves deceptive names, like the Physicians committee for Responsible Medicine, which is a thinly veiled animal activist group that promotes veganism. Thank goodness these people can't run for office.

Thanks for that informative look into your political system.

:)

[ratfan.livejournal.com]

How do they enforce it? Well, we're used to it; that takes care of most of the populace. If you don't vote, you're supposed to get fined. I say "supposed to" because I have not voted twice, once when I was out of the country and too confused to vote (g) and once when I was too sick with flu to get up and come to think of it, also too confused to vote. Only once did they chase me up and I ignored it, whereupon nothing else happened.

There was someone at the polling place talking on the phone about her mother (I gathered) with dementia, who had not been taken off the roll. The person said her mother had no clue who the Prime Minister was, so what was the point? That one will probably get excused on medical grounds.

There was one group called the Animal Justice Party (reminded me of what I've read about PETA). Very over the top and oh, they would like us all to become vegans and for the economy to concentrate on plant-based foods. By being too extreme they guarantee nobody outside their group will listen even on matters that do need attention, i.e. they want to stop live cattle exports etc and that's good, but their methods, not so much.

"Donkey vote" probably didn't translate then. That's deliberately spoiling your ballot paper so it won't be counted.

[sue-bursztynski.livejournal.com]

I once got a letter saying I hadn't voted for the local council when I had. They stuffed up the polling booths, not telling us where we could and couldn't vote, so quite a few people, including me, went to a booth that wasn't ours, despite it being just down the road at the town hall. I told them I had so voted and they let it go.

I am all for compulsory voting. When it's not compulsory, conservatives tend to win and then people whinge that they didn't have their say. Look at the Brexit vote. They go on about how it was only so many per cent of so many per cent of people voting and it's not FAIR! Maybe not, but if everyone had bothered to vote, nobody could complain.

[ariaflame.livejournal.com]

Informal vote is spoiling the paper. Donkey vote is numbering from 1 at the top down no matter what they were I thought (health party had no. 1 spot in NSW) the anti-paedophiles party was also alas anti-safe schools

[ratfan.livejournal.com]

Quite correct, sorry. It's been a long time since I had Mr Weston threatening me about messing with my vote (g).

[blackrabbit42.livejournal.com]

I am so fascinated!! I had no idea. I hope you don't mind all these questions, but I'm just sort of flabbergasted.

So, do I understand correctly, that instead of voting for one party you think is the best, you rank them? And what does it mean if a party "wins?" If I'm right about understanding about the ranking, then what happens with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th ranked parties? You mentioned there being a difference between parties and candidates. What does above the line mean? Just, what? to the whole thing.

Can you give me the very basic, basic idea of what the heck?

:)

[sue-bursztynski.livejournal.com]

"Above the line" in Senate voting means that you choose your party(in this election, six parties, in the order you want them)and leave it to the parties to decide the preferences. They do deals with each other - "Okay, we'll give you our preferences if you'll give us yours". Basically, this means, "If my party doesn't win, the next best is..." "Below the line" there are quite a lot more to choose from, but you get to make your own decision about which order to put them. Until this election, this would have meant that Alex would have to rank all 79 candidates for her state and I would have had to rank 116! The minimum is now 12; I did 30. It was explained in an article I read that if you do, say, 12, and none of them get in, your vote has no chance. The article urged readers to choose as many as possible. I did what I could, but I figured that it was pretty likely that one of the 30 would get through! I have, in the past, voted below the line and chosen the order for all hundred or more, but with my mother along, I was very glad I had another option!

[ratfan.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Sue, you explained that better than I would have.

I do remember once, when we had to rank all of them, taking my dice to the voting booth. [I'm a gamer] After the first five or six, it gets very difficult to choose. For the bottom few spots, you're thinking, "Okay, who do I hate the most?"

Questions are cool. I don't often get this much response on one of my posts.

[blackrabbit42.livejournal.com]

So, do parties like the free sex party and what-not actually have any chance of getting... chosen? (not sure if that's the right word?) If not, what a colossal waste of time and money (fully aware that this makes me as an American the pot calling the kettle black). I can't imagine having to rank that many choices.

So fascinating!

:)

[ratfan.livejournal.com]

Australian Sex Party (g); they don't think it should be free! I haven't checked to see how they've done this time, but I believe they've got representatives elected in Victoria, the state where they were founded. They want to counter the influence of religion; quite a few of the minor parties are religious crackpots of one kind or another. And proper legal protection for sex workers and so on.

So that one is for real, but quite a few of the others will sink without trace, until our next election.

My condolences on Donald Trump, by the way. We have Clive Palmer, of the party of the same name, also a billionaire nutter, but I don't believe Clive's considered becoming Prime Minister. I would almost suspect Trump of making a Crossroads deal, you know, the way he can say anything and none of it seems to do him any damage. Watch out, in about another eight years...

[blackrabbit42.livejournal.com]

The thing about Trump is this... it's bad enough thinking about him being president, but even if he doesn't get elected, it's still exposed a lot of people whose lives are led by fear and hate, and they'll still be there, our neighbors and such, even if he doesn't win. It's so sad.