Post election post

You have to love parliamentary democracy. Even better, you have to love the comments on this article in the Herald-Sun that proves my point that I made several weeks ago about Australians: We all know bugger all about our own system.

The article itself begs some pretty powerful questions.

Firstly, how illiterate actually is the Herald-Sun's readership?

Secondly, is our system actually broken?

Obligatory election summary post

As I'm prone to do, here is my Jagajaga-centric summary of election posts. It may provide you with a guide to assisting you with voting in this election. Or it might not. Learn some stuff, like:

• Why don't Julia or Tony's name appear on my ballot paper?
• What actually is a "donkey vote"?
• Why should voters bother researching their candidates?
• Is there anything interesting I should know about preferential voting?
• Why should I completely disregard how-to-vote cards?
• How can I vote below the line for the Senate easily?

Or alternatively, you could just go to my Election 2010 tag page.

Happy voting!

How to vote below the line easily (Election post number 9)

And now it is time to look at The Senate.

I've found this great webpage, [link removed, see below] by the way, which helps you put together your own how-to-vote card for the Senate. But more on this in a moment.

Edit 18/08/2013: Vote below the line has moved here.  Also, I think it's worth noting that this stuff relates to the 2010 election.  I'll try to do an updated one for the 2013 election, if I get time.

Edit 18/08/2013: Well, it appears that someone else has moved onto the belowtheline.org.au website and are offering the same thing as last election.  Boy, does my face look red.

The Senate is the house of review in Australia. Each state elects 12 senators, and the NT and ACT get two each. Of these, 6 from each state and 1 from each territory come up for election each election.

As a result, voting for the Senate can confuse your average punter senseless.

How-to-vote cards (Keeping your member "local" part the last)

I have been amazed by some things this election. I was rendered speechless when I heard that Family First, the not-yet-militant Christian extremists, had been attempting to do a preference deal in the Senate with the Australian Sex Party. Laugh? I nearly spontaneously combusted!

I still hear staunch Liberal voters who claim that economic management will be better off with them than the ALP. That would be worth voting for, if it wasn't for the fact that the current bunch of Libs have promised spending out of control and the leadership sees economics as a tedious footnote to political administration.

More hilarious still, is the fact that the ALP really don't get how they got it right on economic management during the global financial crisis, whether by fluke or design. Why not make this an election issue? It's a guaranteed vote winner, although it might be evidence that the ALP isn't really interested in economics either. I would think it amazing if the ALP felt that voters were turned off by stuff as mundane as economics.

Interesting things about preferential voting (Keeping your member "local" part seven)

This is where I almost finish up with my investigation of preferential voting using my case study of the seat of Jagajaga. I will look at the Senate soon, I promise.

I learned a lot after my last post. For starters, I learned that votes in a safe seat aren't quite so much wasted as what I thought. As it happens, party coffers are guaranteed funding from the AEC on the basis of primary votes, so, although this is going to go mainly the way of incumbent parties, there is a chance for you, the voter, to ensure that even if your first preference is going to be discarded, you may get to have the taxpayer contribute part of the gravy train that is electoral funding towards a smaller party. This is a valuable piece of information.

Why am I even bothering? (Keeping your member "local" part six)

People probably wonder why I bother with this. Right about now I'm having thoughts of that nature myself.

"I know who I'm voting for," they might say.

"Why don't you just follow a how-to-vote card?" some might ask.

"Get a life!" order those without a shred of originality, finesse, style, sense of irony or, strangely, a life of their own.

The fact is that, even though I live in an safe Labor seat where any vote is essentially a wasted vote, I strangely want to do things properly. At the end of the day, I will know something about my candidates. How many of you can say the same thing?

Candidate responses - Jagajaga

You might recall that I sent a communiqué off to some of the candidates who will be standing for election for the seat of Jagajaga.

I have in my hot little hands responses from candidates Kearney and Harris. Chris Kearney, as you may recall, is the Greens candidate for Jagajaga and Peter Harris is the Secular Party's candidate.

So what did they have to offer? Let's look at them one by one.