Dikkii's Diatribe: lyndon la rouche

Anyway, this is part 2.

Part 1 is here.

I didn't mention for the benefit of my international readers that voting is compulsory in Australia.

This is important, because it could be considered a wasted exercise in the electorate where I live: Jagajaga.

Jagajaga is a safe Labor seat. Current member Jenny Macklin will be comfortably re-elected on Saturday unless a natural disaster were to hit the outer north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Consequently, my vote is like Stan's in that episode of South Park where he's forced to pick between a douche and a turd sandwich.

Not that I'm suggesting that Macklin or any of the other candidates in Jagajaga are either of these.

But I am not just voting for my local member. I am also required to cast my vote for the Senate.

And that is always truly interesting.

But anyway, here are my options on Saturday, and here is my present voting guide:

Dikkii's How-To-Vote card for the Division of Jagajaga

Here are the options as they will appear on the ballot paper:

Ballot Position	Candidate Name	Party Ballot Name
1	LELE, Stephen	Citizens Electoral Council
2	MACKLIN, Jenny	Australian Labor Party
3	HODGSON, Lisa	Australian Greens
4	CONLON, Andrew	Family First
5	D'SOUZA, Conrad	Liberal
6	GRAHAM, Jason	Australian Democrats

The first thing that should be noted is that the Citizens Electoral Council (CEC) candidate is first. This gives him a go at any perceived "donkey" votes.

However, as Lele should be eliminated reasonably early on, the donkey vote will favour Macklin.

And thank goodness for that - the CEC is a bunch of Larouchian toerags who wouldn't know a cogent economic argument if it punched them in the face.

Interesting. We have a Family First candidate up for grabs. Family First are grievous religious kooks.

This answers my first question: Who to put last on the ballot paper?

We'll come back to that one.

Who to put first has always been a no-brainer for those who know me. This is how I will be numbering.

Number 1

Hodgson of the Greens.

And why not? The Greens haven't gotten power mad yet. Or contradicted themselves in a major hypocritical way. Yet.

Number 2

Graham of the Democrats.

Dunno why the Dems - they are going to be pretty much extinct as of this election, with no more members in the Senate. Sad.

And they've never had much of a presence in the House. Oh well.

Numbers 5 and 6 are going to be hard. You're looking at nutters versus wackos. But here's where I am at the moment:

Number 5

Conlon of Family First.

Number 6

Lele of the Citizens Electoral Council

I might add that this is largely academic - Macklin will probably get a majority on primary votes alone. So my 5th and 6th preferences are extraordinarily unlikely to be used.

So on to the hard bit. The major parties. Do I preference Labor over Liberal or vice versa?

In the end I did this:

Number 3

Macklin of the Australian Labor Party

Number 4

D'Souza of Liberal

In the end, the horribly negative campaign that the Libs are running has me practically wanting to see their local guy humiliated.

OK. So wasted vote finished, what about the Senate?

Dikkii's How-To-Vote card for the Senate - State of Victoria

There are 68 candidates for Senate seats from Victoria, representing 23 groups of candidates, and four ungrouped ones.

Two options to vote - either the number 1 only above the line for a group, or below the line where you have to put a number in all 68 boxes.

Voting above the line is silly, undemocratic, opaque, and fraught with all sorts of complications which I can't stand.

And it's for those reasons that I will be numbering the boxes below the line. Oh, and I'm a complete bastard who likes to make it hard for the guys who count my vote.

Upper preferences

My initial preferences will include the following groups:

Australian Greens
Australian Democrats
Carers Alliance
What Wimmen Want
Climate Change Coalition
Senator On-line

I have to research some of the others a bit more.

Lower preferences

Last will be the nutters and extremists:

Socialist Alliance
Australian Shooters Party
One Nation
The One Nation WA ungrouped candidate
Socialist Equality Party
LDP (which stands for Liberty and Democracy Party)
Family First
Citizens Electoral Council
Christian Democratic Party

I will probably put the Shooters last, but the CEC will not be far ahead of them.

Unsure at this stage

I don't really know where to slot these ones in, yet. So they'll probably go down in my lower preferences:

Democratic Labor Party (DLP)
Conservatives for Climate and Environment
The unnamed groups and the ungrouped candidates (except for the One Nation one)

Will be doing some homework first on these.

The major parties

These will go in the middle, and just like in the Jagajaga ballot paper, they will go in this order: