Australian Election
Sep. 7th, 2013 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenSo... those of you who aren't Australians and don't follow me on Twitter, may not even be aware that we're having Federal elections today, or may be confused about strange Australian politics even if you do know.
So in this brief lull, where the polling stations in the eastern states have closed, but those in timezones further west are still open, I shall attempt to explain just a few little quirks we have. (Illustrated with excerpts from Twitter)
A. First of all, it isn't a proper election without a sausage sizzle.
This election was much improved by the kind services of electionsausagesizzle.com.au, which let you know which polling booths had sausage sizzles, cake stalls and the like. I was fortunate that this time, my nearest polling booth (at the local primary school) did have a sausage sizzle; last election they didn't.
I do not know the origin of the democracy sausage; it is probably tied in with the traditions of the Aussie barbecue, the use of sausage sizzles as fund-raisers, the tendency for schools and church halls (which are the most common sites for polling booths) to need funding, and the assurance that compulsory voting gives that people will turn up, all coming together in a delicious whole.
Indeed, the true winner this election may be the sausage sizzles.
EXIT POLLS SHOW SAUSAGE ON BREAD LEADS MOST NT BOOTHS, STEAK SANGA HANGING IN THERE, SALAD ROLL SUPPORT TOTALLY COLLAPSED
As Australians head to the polls together we have hit a worldwide peak for the use of the word #sausage on Twitter in 2013!
B. Oh, yes, did I mention that voting here is compulsory?
Strictly speaking, turning up at the polling booth is compulsory. They look you up on a copy of the electoral roll, and mark your name, and give you your ballot papers. They don't actually check whether you've filled them in. They just check that you put them in the correct box. You could leave them blank if you want, but it seems a bit silly, after you've turned up, not to actually vote.
If your name isn't marked on the roll as having turned up, you get fined. To be precise, they send you a form inviting you to explain why you didn't vote, and if you don't have a good excuse, you get fined. I failed to vote in my local council elections once. It was a postal vote, they sent the ballots by mail. I told them the snails ate the ballot paper. They didn't consider that a good excuse. 8-P
I cheerfully paid the fine.
Thing is, I consider it my civic duty to vote. I think compulsory voting is one of the best things about Australia's democracy. It baffles me how folks from other democracies seem horrified that Australia has compulsory voting. What's wrong with it? It seems a lot better to me to have a democracy where (a) the MPs are elected by an ACTUAL MAJORITY of the citizenry; (b) the politicians have to woo the undecided middle, not the dedicated extremists; (c) knowing that one has to vote makes it more likely that folks will think about their vote; (d) the government is motivated to make it easier to vote, not harder.
C. Being upside-down, our Liberals are conservative.
That is, where the USA has the Republicans, the UK has the Tories, we have the Liberal Party, or, to be more precise, the long-standing coalition between the Liberal Party and the National Party (formerly known as the National-Country Party), so long-standing that their current logo is "LNP". The major "liberal" party is called Labour. I put "liberal" in quotes because, given their behaviour recently, they aren't liberal any more, but centrist, while the LNP are even more right-wing than they used to be.
Fortunately, we do actually have minor parties, and preferential voting... which brings us to...
D. Our ballots are somewhat intimidating.
So, American friends... this was our Victorian senate voting sheet. Number the boxes under the line 1-97!
To allay your confusion somewhat...
The green ballot paper is the ballot for the House of Representatives. It is pretty simple: there's half a dozen candidates for your electorate (where you live), and you number the boxes in order of your preference. Simple.
The white ballot paper is for the Senate. The Senate is the "house of review"; it has to approve of the laws that are passed by the House of Representatives. Now, the founders of Australia were rather clever. They wanted a house of review that would be effective as a house of review, not a rubber stamp. Which means that they needed to find a way to have elected members of the Senate, who were NOT in exactly the same proportions as the House of Representatives. They needed to find a different way of electing them. They took a two-pronged approach. The first part is that, with every Federal Election, only half the Senate is elected. The other half were elected the previous election. This means that the Senate will be a mix of who the nation liked three years ago, and who they like now. Which will be a different mix than in the House of Representatives. The second part is that election to the Senate is determined by proportional representation, per state. That is, each state gets a certain number of seats, and the seats are determined by the proportion of the votes of the whole state.
This means that it's much easier for small parties to get into the Senate.
Which means that a LOT of small parties put candidates in for the Senate.
This election, in Victoria, there were 97. Candidates, that is, not parties.
That's a lot of boxes to fill in. Because, yes, the Senate ballot is also preferential. When I first started voting, you just took a deep breath and filled in all the boxes. But a few elections ago (I can't remember exactly when) the politicians reckoned it was too complicated... so they introduced another method, which just made the whole thing more confusing: they introduced THE LINE.
The LINE divides the Senate ballot paper into two sections, the section ABOVE THE LINE, and the section BELOW THE LINE. The two sections represent two different ways of filling in your ballot; you can choose one or the other (but not both). The section BELOW-THE-LINE is the old, original way of filling in the ballot, huge numbers of squares and all. The section above the line is the simple and stupid way of filling it in - you let one party vote for you.
"What?" you ask. "You let a party vote for you?"
Well, that's what it boils down to. Instead of filling in all the boxes below the line, you fill in ONE box above the line, a box representing a major-ish party (there's about half a dozen). That party has very kindly figured out what ballot order is in their best interests, and given that to the electoral commission beforehand, so that if you vote ABOVE-THE-LINE, that "official ballot for that party" becomes your vote.
"What's wrong with that?" you say. "They'll put themselves first, that's obvious."
Yeah, but who are they putting second, third, fourth? It might not be who you want. A lot of negotiating goes on between the parties beforehand, for "preference swapping". Things like "I'll put you third on my ballot if you put me third on yours." And it isn't always who you would expect. And it's not that easy to find out what those preferences are. Oh, it isn't impossible, but it isn't easy.
I have ALWAYS voted BELOW-THE-LINE. This year it was much easier because I found belowtheline.org.au; it enabled me to ponder my vote in the comfort of my own home, looking at the various parties' websites, figure out my ballot order and save it as a PDF, which I simply printed out this morning and referred to in the polling booth. MUCH easier.
So in this brief lull, where the polling stations in the eastern states have closed, but those in timezones further west are still open, I shall attempt to explain just a few little quirks we have. (Illustrated with excerpts from Twitter)
A. First of all, it isn't a proper election without a sausage sizzle.
This election was much improved by the kind services of electionsausagesizzle.com.au, which let you know which polling booths had sausage sizzles, cake stalls and the like. I was fortunate that this time, my nearest polling booth (at the local primary school) did have a sausage sizzle; last election they didn't.
I do not know the origin of the democracy sausage; it is probably tied in with the traditions of the Aussie barbecue, the use of sausage sizzles as fund-raisers, the tendency for schools and church halls (which are the most common sites for polling booths) to need funding, and the assurance that compulsory voting gives that people will turn up, all coming together in a delicious whole.
Indeed, the true winner this election may be the sausage sizzles.
EXIT POLLS SHOW SAUSAGE ON BREAD LEADS MOST NT BOOTHS, STEAK SANGA HANGING IN THERE, SALAD ROLL SUPPORT TOTALLY COLLAPSED
As Australians head to the polls together we have hit a worldwide peak for the use of the word #sausage on Twitter in 2013!
B. Oh, yes, did I mention that voting here is compulsory?
Strictly speaking, turning up at the polling booth is compulsory. They look you up on a copy of the electoral roll, and mark your name, and give you your ballot papers. They don't actually check whether you've filled them in. They just check that you put them in the correct box. You could leave them blank if you want, but it seems a bit silly, after you've turned up, not to actually vote.
If your name isn't marked on the roll as having turned up, you get fined. To be precise, they send you a form inviting you to explain why you didn't vote, and if you don't have a good excuse, you get fined. I failed to vote in my local council elections once. It was a postal vote, they sent the ballots by mail. I told them the snails ate the ballot paper. They didn't consider that a good excuse. 8-P
I cheerfully paid the fine.
Thing is, I consider it my civic duty to vote. I think compulsory voting is one of the best things about Australia's democracy. It baffles me how folks from other democracies seem horrified that Australia has compulsory voting. What's wrong with it? It seems a lot better to me to have a democracy where (a) the MPs are elected by an ACTUAL MAJORITY of the citizenry; (b) the politicians have to woo the undecided middle, not the dedicated extremists; (c) knowing that one has to vote makes it more likely that folks will think about their vote; (d) the government is motivated to make it easier to vote, not harder.
C. Being upside-down, our Liberals are conservative.
That is, where the USA has the Republicans, the UK has the Tories, we have the Liberal Party, or, to be more precise, the long-standing coalition between the Liberal Party and the National Party (formerly known as the National-Country Party), so long-standing that their current logo is "LNP". The major "liberal" party is called Labour. I put "liberal" in quotes because, given their behaviour recently, they aren't liberal any more, but centrist, while the LNP are even more right-wing than they used to be.
Fortunately, we do actually have minor parties, and preferential voting... which brings us to...
D. Our ballots are somewhat intimidating.
So, American friends... this was our Victorian senate voting sheet. Number the boxes under the line 1-97!
To allay your confusion somewhat...
The green ballot paper is the ballot for the House of Representatives. It is pretty simple: there's half a dozen candidates for your electorate (where you live), and you number the boxes in order of your preference. Simple.
The white ballot paper is for the Senate. The Senate is the "house of review"; it has to approve of the laws that are passed by the House of Representatives. Now, the founders of Australia were rather clever. They wanted a house of review that would be effective as a house of review, not a rubber stamp. Which means that they needed to find a way to have elected members of the Senate, who were NOT in exactly the same proportions as the House of Representatives. They needed to find a different way of electing them. They took a two-pronged approach. The first part is that, with every Federal Election, only half the Senate is elected. The other half were elected the previous election. This means that the Senate will be a mix of who the nation liked three years ago, and who they like now. Which will be a different mix than in the House of Representatives. The second part is that election to the Senate is determined by proportional representation, per state. That is, each state gets a certain number of seats, and the seats are determined by the proportion of the votes of the whole state.
This means that it's much easier for small parties to get into the Senate.
Which means that a LOT of small parties put candidates in for the Senate.
This election, in Victoria, there were 97. Candidates, that is, not parties.
That's a lot of boxes to fill in. Because, yes, the Senate ballot is also preferential. When I first started voting, you just took a deep breath and filled in all the boxes. But a few elections ago (I can't remember exactly when) the politicians reckoned it was too complicated... so they introduced another method, which just made the whole thing more confusing: they introduced THE LINE.
The LINE divides the Senate ballot paper into two sections, the section ABOVE THE LINE, and the section BELOW THE LINE. The two sections represent two different ways of filling in your ballot; you can choose one or the other (but not both). The section BELOW-THE-LINE is the old, original way of filling in the ballot, huge numbers of squares and all. The section above the line is the simple and stupid way of filling it in - you let one party vote for you.
"What?" you ask. "You let a party vote for you?"
Well, that's what it boils down to. Instead of filling in all the boxes below the line, you fill in ONE box above the line, a box representing a major-ish party (there's about half a dozen). That party has very kindly figured out what ballot order is in their best interests, and given that to the electoral commission beforehand, so that if you vote ABOVE-THE-LINE, that "official ballot for that party" becomes your vote.
"What's wrong with that?" you say. "They'll put themselves first, that's obvious."
Yeah, but who are they putting second, third, fourth? It might not be who you want. A lot of negotiating goes on between the parties beforehand, for "preference swapping". Things like "I'll put you third on my ballot if you put me third on yours." And it isn't always who you would expect. And it's not that easy to find out what those preferences are. Oh, it isn't impossible, but it isn't easy.
I have ALWAYS voted BELOW-THE-LINE. This year it was much easier because I found belowtheline.org.au; it enabled me to ponder my vote in the comfort of my own home, looking at the various parties' websites, figure out my ballot order and save it as a PDF, which I simply printed out this morning and referred to in the polling booth. MUCH easier.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-09 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-09 02:39 am (UTC)Everyone ought to have the right to vote. I was trying to say that everyone in a democracy (if they're going to vote, or if they are required to vote) has a responsibility to vote with thoughtfulness rather than the opposite. They have the RIGHT to vote however they want, but if they don't educate themselves, they are shirking their responsibilities.