$2.6 million of votes for sale

Of course now that we can see the sheer size of the donkey vote, now we know that roughly one in twenty people don’t care at all.  Which makes me wonder what kind of commodity donkey voters will become.  Will the major parties try to buy these votes with actual money next time around? 

Maybe websites will spring up where disillusioned voters register their trip to the ballot for sale.   They could sell their [1] on ebay amidst furious bidding from J.Gill and T.Abb, and turn a tidy profit on their complete disinterest.  After all, if voters are already “being bought” by election promises, does it really matter if politicians switch to direct marketing?  I’d warrant $5 in the pocket would be more motivation for a lot of people than any of the millions of dollars of televised nonsense we’ve just been privy to.  

I’ve had a hard time tracking down the cost of the Lib-Labs campaigns, but I’d be really interested to see what they spent per head of the voting population.  For some people, voting is such a chore that if a Lib-Lab stepped up and volunteered to take the trip to the polling booth for them, I’m pretty sure they’d say yes.  We all know it’s not hard to front up at multiple booths and vote multiple times, either under the same name or different ones.  I’m actually wondering at what stage of our non-result election we’ll get around to uncovering the extent of this years rorting.

Rorting and ebay aside, we do know is how much each vote would have been worth.  The Australian Electoral Commission gives funding to parties based on their number of first preferences.  This year each [1] was worth close enough to $2.31.  So if you voted Greens, they got your $2.31 to help fund their campaign next time.  If you voted for them in the House of Reps and the Senate, they received $4.62 – essentially a gift from you to them.  So I headed over to the  AEC Virtual Tally Room to find out just how much all this donkeying was costing.

According to their results, 507 481 Senate votes and 654 981 House Of Reps votes were informal, bringing us to a grand total of 1 162 462 informal votes.  That's over one million votes that didn’t get across the line.  If we cost these at the $2.31 funding rate for a proper vote, we get the staggering figure of $2 685 287.22.  While I consider the 22c important, it’s the $2.6 million that really gets me.  So much money that should have been reinvested in the Lab-Libs, the Greens, the Socialist Alliance, the Hunters and Fishers or the Sex Party, and now it’s just sitting around earning interest for the AEC.  Do you reckon they’ll be having a donkey themed xmas party this year?

There is a price on everything, on everyone and every vote.  I know we all struggled finding interested buyers, but the real question is did we sell ourselves too cheaply this year?

PS.

People definitely tried to sell their 2007 votes. So why haven’t we hear about it this year?

Ebay - 2007 votes for sale

Will the real donkeys please stand up?

Originally I was angry about the donkey voting fever that swept the nation.  The only silver lining I could see in the indecisive chaos was that the bumper stickers were going to be really simple: 

“Don’t blame me, I VOTED!”  

Or for those of us keen to name and shame

 “Don’t blame me, blame Mark Latham.”  

I do find it interesting that a lacklustre politician has now put himself in a position where he will be remembered forever after as the “donkey king.”  If the only political voice these poor lost souls heard was Mark Latham, then Australia pretty much got what was coming to it.

Because it’s our fault too.  We, the dutiful voting public, have failed to convince our donkey voting friends and acquaintances that it was worth doing, and we should cop some of the blame.  We don’t like to talk politics in Australia.  I mean we do now, now that we’re stuck in this idiot position.  Now we’re keen to tell people how preferences worked and why they are a complete dickhead for voting Liberal.  Now we’re openly telling the Labor voters they missed the memo and the Green voters they’re a pack of pretentious wankers.  But before the election we were all deathly quiet and a real political discussion was hard to come by. 

At the end of the day it’s our own fault that so many donkeyed out.

Maybe not the most convincing reason...

PS.  

Please visit Compulsory Voting, NOT and see if you find them convincing...Compulsory Voting, Not

Swinging - that's not my team

It’s been funny watching people get worked up about “idiot swinging voters.”  It seems that the concept that our democracy is based on has been evading them.  If a core group of swinging voters didn’t exist, the result of every single election would be the same.  If voters hadn’t have swung from Labor to Liberal in 1996, John Howard wouldn’t have been our PM.  If voters hadn’t swung from Liberal to Labor in 07 we wouldn’t have had Kevin.  We only really have elections to see which way the population has swung.

I guess what was different this year was that they swing wasn’t just between red and blue.  Lets not kid ourselves, there was still movement between the Lib-Labs, and probably more people changed sides than the “net” swings will ever show us.  But this year the movement favoured the Greens and the Donkeys.  This upset the status quo and has now left both red and blue scratching their heads.

To explore this idea further, we’d best have a look at why the concept of “swinging” is so strange to so many.  A lot of voters probably have a footy team and see their politics as an extension of this.  There are those people who exist under the umbrella of a certain socio-economic lifestyle, and see their vote as reflecting that.  There are people in dangerous jobs who are paid up unionists and use this to determine their allegiance.  But no one factor ever pins an individual to a team.  We all have to make trade offs of conscience and consequence to decide who is really better for us on the day.

Going into the election there were electorates where it is reported that 40% of voters remained undecided.  Apparently how-to-vote cards have been shown to significantly increase primary votes – if you have a representative at the booth you’ll gain ground.  Just a simple smile at a lost punter can make the difference.  So while those of us who’ve been loyal to one party for years might like to think it’s clear cut, for a lot of our fellow voters it isn’t.

So keeping in mind the results only represent the overall swings, and don’t show us exactly how many people fled screaming from somewhere to somewhere else, how did we end up?

Well Labor was down 5.4%, the informal votes were up 1.7%, Liberals were up 1.9% and the Greens win the most improved player award for an increase of 3.7%.  I don’t know how we read the fact that the increases add up to 7.3% and the loss from Labor is only 5.4%.  I consider it a mystery of politics.  (All numbers from ABC and correct on day of reading.)

At the end of the day I guess it’s safe to say people change.  Not only that, but parties change too.  Hopefully the way government runs will change.  And all this change will be good for Australia.  Because we may have gone off swinging this election, but our hearts still lie with Oz.

Never ignore the elephants.

A lot of people are scratching their heads wondering what happened in the Australian 2010 Federal Election.  Some of them are even asking “wtf?”  But it’s really not that hard, it went down something like this.

An elephant was sent to tell Labor that they weren't listening to their voters. Julia laughed and said "always nice to meet an elephant.”  The elephant went to see Tony, but he wouldn’t listen to it either.  Everyone on telly kept asking Julia about the elephant, but she didn’t seem too concerned.  No one was super interested in what Tony had to say, because everyone knows he thinks elephants are “absolute crap.”  There were a lot of other things people were worried about, like equal rights for same sex marriage, healthcare, education and the environment.  These were all raised clearly, but Labor shrugged and said they might be red team, but they wanted the blue voters.

Then there were an awful lot of particularly stupid ads on telly.  The best of them had a catchy jingle and featured people “getting whacked” by an imaginary object that was never ever seen.  Ironically, this was not made by either party.  Red team had broadband, but blue team would stop the boats.  Not to be outdone, Julia said she’d stop the boats too.  She said she’d “move forward” for red and Tony said he’d get “real action” for blue.  But under no circumstances would either of them allow a man to marry a man, or a woman to marry a woman.  Especially not on a boat.

So in the murky purple that followed, everyone got so confused they couldn't remember which party was Labor, Liberal, in power, in opposition, lesser of two evils, or in fact, red or blue. A lot of people didn't understand how the voting and preferencing system worked, and a whole bunch of idiots listened to Mark when he said "donkey vote."

The monkeys locked away in the big room are still counting, and they may have to decide the winner based on who was placed last the least, but that would all come down to preferences, which no-one bothered to learn about.  It would be done quicker, but the monkeys keep getting distracted trying to figure out if a vote should go on the "donkey" or "horse" pile.

"Your vote is a valuable thing."

So thus far the result for red and blue: DEAD HEAT.

I think this means slightly more people "hate boats" than "love broadband," but it depends which channel you were watching or what time you last checked the web.

The people that didn't get get so confused, didn't like the colour purple and wanted good things for Australia like country services, dental in medicare, no bank fees, ... (there is a big list) swung to the Greens or voted in independents. 

As a result of that, one of the two major parties is gonna have to give in to all the Greens and Independents wildest dreams, or be unable to govern.  

And all of them have enormous herds of elephants that need to be fed.


Pre-PS.
Seeings as Hitler is down, maybe you'd like to meet the AYCC Climate Change Elephant.  As occasionally seen in budgie smugglers.
Never doubt that a small, thoughtful, committed elephant can change the world.


PS.
I was particularly surprised at Hitler's response to the election outcome.  The sad thing is that I might have preferenced him over Labor if he'd been running - he seemed to have a good idea as to how the campaign should have been run:
Hitler responds - "it's a colossal farce." - I hope you saw it while you could, it was brilliant, and now:
"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Constantin Film."