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.

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.

What is a donkey vote? (Keeping your member "local" part four)

Well the candidates are all in as far as both the House of Representatives and Senate are concerned. I will do a post in the future on voting for the Senate, but at the moment I'm looking closely at how to get a local candidate into the House of Reps.

And although this series looks at the electorate of Jagajaga specifically, I hope that those of you who live in the rest of Australia can get something out of it.

First of all, it's interesting, but I thought that there would be more candidates for Jagajaga. I thought maybe the CEC might field a candidate. And that maybe there might be an independent or two.

But it does appear that as far as Jagajaga goes, all the candidates are going to be representing political parties.