atw: Re: OT: WARNING: Recruiter advertisements are ONLY trawling for resumes for tender responses!
- From: Kath Bowman <Kath.Bowman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2012 14:18:44 +0930
At the last election I did my usual thing of voting below the line for the
Senate election. I start at both ends, and hope they meet in the middle with no
errors. Last time, I somehow mucked it up, so took my ballot slip back to the
desk and asked for another one. This is exactly what the adverts leading up to
the election told you to do. Well, it was like asking for a bar of gold. I had
to stand my ground and insist on a new paper (which I got) but it was hard
going.
I used to help my mother fill in the forms (she was blind) and she voted below
the line too. I seemed to spend ages in the booth filling in ballots, but there
is something inherently satisfying about putting some people/parties at the
bottom!
Cheers
Kath
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Kent, Christine
Sent: Thursday, 16 August 2012 1:46 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: OT: WARNING: Recruiter advertisements are ONLY trawling for
resumes for tender responses!
The amazing thing is that in the senate votes, virtually no-one knows where the
preferences go if you put the ‘1’ for the party above the line. At the last two
elections I’ve asked the booth staff and all of the folk handing out
how-to-votes. Nobody knew and the only people who were able to rummage out the
info were the Greens.
Get-Up actually did provide information on this an election or two back – they
made a big thing of it.
Easy answer for both upper and lower house is to number the whole damn lot
yourself. I always do that just to make sure the parties cannot do corrupt
deals to determine where my vote goes – not that my one vote matters much but
one can always hope the idea goes into the group mind.
I also understand that preferences only flow down 3 levels, so if you have 5 or
6 on your card, I don’t recall exactly, you can number those you know have no
chance whatever of winning as 1, 2 and 3, and after that, your vote is tossed –
doesn’t actually make logical sense, but one can live in hope that it works
that way. Does anyone know if it still works this way?
Williamstown was a great electorate for this. Their right wing candidate was
the labor candidate and everyone else – and there were usually lot, were
further left than labor (not hard these days). You knew the labor candidate
was going to win so you picked any other three as 1, 2, 3 etc – with the labor
candidate the last preference.
So, it is now unlawful to vote with clear intention, but you can vote the lazy
way and not know who’s getting your vote. Great!! (where’s that new sarcastic
font?)
Cheers,
Terry
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