Election Day!

 I'm a few days late with this, but home sick today, so a good time to revive the blog!

Elections happen every three or four years, and voting is compulsory. It's never on a set date - the Prime Minister has to set the date and does so six weeks before the election. But it's always on a Saturday, polls are open from 8am - 6pm, and there is early voting available for two weeks prior to election day. You can apply to vote by mail, and this year the election committee offered phone voting for anyone who tested positive to Covid up to 5pm the day before the election.

There are many, many political parties in Australia, but two major ones - the Liberals and Labour. Any MPs elected outside those two parties make up the 'cross bench', and can literally cross to vote with either Liberals or Labour on various issues. I am pretty sure Liberal and Labour representatives and senators can also cross the floor if they wish to vote against party interest.

In Australia we don't vote for the Prime Minister. The PM is the head of the party, and whichever party wins the majority of the seats puts their head of party in the PM position. Previously the Liberal party had been in control for about nine years, so the head of the Liberal party, which switched a few times in these past nine years, was the Prime Minister. 

Australia has a preferential voting system. Voters must put numbers by all their candidates in preferential order, and must fill all the boxes for their ballot to be valid.  The ballots are paper and are very large!  Nevertheless, this very long line to vote last Saturday went very quickly.

While you wait in line, people volunteering from all the parties hand out flyers with information about each candidate in your electorate. Our area used to be in an electorate called Deakin, but was rezoned into the Menzies electorate, and people from either electorate could vote at our polling place, so there were a LOT of flyers. On each, the parties gave recommended voting rankings. For example, Labour recommended putting the Greens party second, because the Greens almost always vote with Labour. They recommended putting Liberal fifth out of seven, because the ranked voting can put a Labour candidate ahead overall even if they don't get the majority of first preference votes.

While in line, my American accent was making friends left and right  I chatted with the couple in front of us, who said, "We visited Minnesota all the time in the 70s!  I worked for Control Data!  We stayed at that Radisson at 494 and 35W."  This happened to be where my wedding reception was, which just confirms to me that all of Melbourne is just one small town. Also made friends with the guy who was handing out flyers for Labour, who was also American from California. Right around this time was when Ruth started muttering, "Please stop talking to strangers!" but it wasn't my fault. People love the accent.   

The Liberal candidate for Senate was also working the line, handing out preference flyers and meeting voters in a Covid-safe manner. I told him I didn't need one and wished him luck (our electorate is historically a very safe Liberal one) and he wished my candidate luck too, then moved down the line. Mr Control Data in front of me, who spent a very long time talking to the candidate, turned to me and said, "Nothing like your Donald Trump, yeah?"  Yes indeed. Liberal party candidates are not my cup of tea but almost any of them are better than what we have in the US.  One Liberal MP for our state, who expressed regret that we don't have stronger anti-abortion laws like the US, was recently expelled from the party for being too radical. Australians are a sensible people.

The big white ballot is for the House of Reps.
The little green ballot next to the book of voters is for Senate. 
The election official was finding my name in the book and crossing me off.
After the election, the books are cross-referenced. Anyone not crossed off gets fined.

Many of the parties have very narrow interests, like the Cannabis party, predictably, is mostly just interested in making marijuana legal. The Hunters, Shooters and Fishers party would like more guns to be available to more people (not that guns aren't available for hunters, but that's another post). The Liberal Nationals were promoting 'bringing Liberty back to Australia' which gave me big anti-vax, anti-mask vibes. Then there are the super racist parties like One Nation, which sounds like a good name, but in actuality they are anti-immigration, anti-refugee, anti-Paris accords, anti-choice.  Another party, the United Australia Party, is funded by a multi-millionaire who used to be in Parliament but isn't any longer. the UAP believes in keeping Australian resources in Australia, absolutely against any kind of Covid restrictions. The UAP was behind many of the 'protests' in Melbourne and Sydney complaining about vaccines and lockdowns. There was so much money behind them, everyone I knew got SMS spammed by them multiple times leading up to the election.

On to the results . . .

As you can see from the result above, while the Coalition (which was Liberal plus the parties they were able to form a government with since they didn't have a true majority) led by quite a bit on first votes (the bar graph) but Labour was winning because they had more higher preferences than the Coalition/Liberal party did. Hence, Scott Morrison, the head of the Liberal party, was removed from the PM position and the head of Labour, Anthony Albanese, became the new PM the Monday after election day. Morrison still remains in Parliament, but he will be what's called a 'back bencher', holding no leadership role, just representing his electorate in New South Wales. 

Overall, Labour is one seat from having a true majority, but there are three Greens PMs also elected, so they will certainly be able to form the new government. There are still four electorates too close to call, one of which is Deakin, the one we used to be in. Deakin used to be safe Liberal, now Liberal and Labour are neck and neck, even five days after the election. Overall, many, many Liberal MPs got voted out. In Victoria, there was a wave of Independent candidates who were elected in their place. This is what can happen when everyone votes.

Me submitting my House ballot

Ruth submitting my Senate ballot

Finally, after voting, polling places (usually schools or community centres) sponsor sausage sizzles. Ours was very basic, just sausages in bread. Others also have cake stalls (bake sales), or cook egg and bacon rolls. Money goes to the school. They call them Democracy Sausages - and there was even a website where you could look up what sort of goodies were available at each polling place, and choose accordingly (there are a few polling places in each electorate, and you can go to any of them).  Ruth came along to help cast votes (she helps Joel every time - it's a tradition) but mostly for the sausages.

$3 is a little steep, but they were
saving for a timpani drum.