voting in a couple of days...

[miriam_e]

I'll be voting for the Greens because they are the only ones who have consistently pushed for good sense and moral choices. But what to do for the Senate? I could just put a "1" in the Greens box above the line, but I'm thinking I would like to register my disgust at all the big parties, so I think I'll vote under the line and number all the boxes, choosing Green candidates first, then all the independents, regardless of how lunatic, and only after that will I number the remaining big parties. They have all shown themselves to be utterly repellent.

Sorry Julia Gillard. You might be a breath of fresh air for Australia, but more likely big party politics will turn you into a burden like all those before you. It would be nice to have a woman running the show for once, especially one with your background, but Margaret Thatcher in England showed that being a female leader doesn't guarantee humane outcomes. Maybe if you'd disposed of the internet censor instead of simply postponing it for 2 years, or spoken up about humane treatment of refugees, or took a sensible stand on any of the other things the big parties are too weak and scared to tackle... Oh well.

Comments

[lirion.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Below the Line
It's very useful!

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Wow! That's brilliant! Thanks for that, Georgie. It makes me feel much more confident about voting day.

[thorfinn]

Oh good. You've been pointed at https://belowtheline.org.au already. I never vote above the line - the whole point of having preferential voting is that I can supply my own preferences. :-)

Personally I'm voting Sex Party.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was reading about the Sex Party. They are really good and stand for an incredible number of really sensible things. They will certainly be high on my list. The thing that scares me is that the conservative non-thinkers out there will vote Libs and those mental voids will seize control of the country for years again, because those of us with good sense and self-honesty will spread our votes between Greens, Sex Party, Secular Party, and various independents. A bit of a worry.

Last time the Labour Party did massively stupid things near an election was when Beasley spoke out against refugees during the infamous "children overboard" lie-fest. There was such a swing against Labour the Greens doubled their vote and the Lib mongrels won the numbers. >:( I hope that doesn't happen again. Having that imbecile Abbott as prime minister would be even worse than that nasty little liar Howard. I wish Gillard hadn't shown herself to be a coward on so many important topics.

[thorfinn]

Fortunately, because we have preferential voting, the "spreading our votes" actually doesn't cause us any actual issue. It's correct strategy *to* spread the vote in that way. The only minor concern is to do with missing out on the $2.31 per vote of election funding if a minor party polls sub 4% of the primary vote, and that's really a minor issue.

Places like the US where they don't use preferential voting (or instant-run-off as it's sometimes known) are where you really have a major problem when you're deciding to vote for a minor party.

It actually speaks volumes about preferential voting that one of our "two-party-preferred" parties isn't actually a single party. This is a good thing. :-)

As for Gillard... I think she tried to be inoffensive. Which meant she was neither positive enough *or* negative enough. :-/

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Interesting way to look at the "spreading the votes" problem. Thanks. Makes me feel quite a bit better. I was speaking to an old girlfriend in New Zealand and she insisted that I threw my vote away. :(

Regarding Julia Gillard: I think her heart is in the right place and she has a sane view of the world, but she didn't stand her ground against her minders. They are the real power. If you have a weak person as prime minister then the minders run the show, and the minders embody all the worst aspects of politics -- they have no humanity or honesty and are all about shallow appearance. That's why I said I thought she was a coward. Her minders wanted her to be inoffensive. She should have been herself.

Heavens! More of us might have actually voted for Labour if one of their politicians showed a bit of honest spine and humanity. Rudd came close at first, but got worn down by his damn minders.