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The upcoming federal election means it's time again to start gathering tools for tackling the senate ballot.
Australian senate ballot papers are notoriously long and complicated; this year, the ballot paper for Western Australian senatorial candidates offers 67 candidates from 23-and-a-bit parties, which is fairly restrained. It's not quite as bad as it used be -- time was, the only responsible way to fill out the ballot was by individually numbering every single box, but now the rule is that your vote still counts if you number at least 12, with everybody you choose not to number getting none of your vote. (Which means that this year you can potentially rank up to 55 candidates dead last if you want, which it is not unlikely that you might.)
Cluey Voter offers an online tool to help you figure out which numbers go where, and print out your own personal how-to-vote card so you don't get confused when confronted with all those boxes on polling day.
To help you figure out which boxes you want to put which numbers in, you need to know what you think of the parties, many of whom you probably haven't heard of before. The ABC and The Guardian have polite but informative guides to the minor parties, while Donkey Votie and this bloke on r/perth go for the snarky commentary. (The latter also goes above and beyond by covering the independent candidates.)
[hat-tip to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rdm for posting the ABC link and reminding me it was that time again]
Australian senate ballot papers are notoriously long and complicated; this year, the ballot paper for Western Australian senatorial candidates offers 67 candidates from 23-and-a-bit parties, which is fairly restrained. It's not quite as bad as it used be -- time was, the only responsible way to fill out the ballot was by individually numbering every single box, but now the rule is that your vote still counts if you number at least 12, with everybody you choose not to number getting none of your vote. (Which means that this year you can potentially rank up to 55 candidates dead last if you want, which it is not unlikely that you might.)
Cluey Voter offers an online tool to help you figure out which numbers go where, and print out your own personal how-to-vote card so you don't get confused when confronted with all those boxes on polling day.
To help you figure out which boxes you want to put which numbers in, you need to know what you think of the parties, many of whom you probably haven't heard of before. The ABC and The Guardian have polite but informative guides to the minor parties, while Donkey Votie and this bloke on r/perth go for the snarky commentary. (The latter also goes above and beyond by covering the independent candidates.)
[hat-tip to
rdm for posting the ABC link and reminding me it was that time again]
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They state that they're opposed to discrimination of immigrants based on ethnicity or religion. They're in favour of letting refugees in, both on moral grounds and on the practical grounds that refugees don't make nearly as much difference to the population numbers as the scare campaigns would suggest. In the area of internally generated population growth, they're opposed to restrictions on family size and coercive efforts to reduce fertility.
Their plan for reducing internally generated population growth involves better access to education and contraception for all. I'm not sure I've got my head around their immigration policy yet, but part of it involves throttling back the skilled worker immigration programs in favour of putting more effort on increasing the skills of the people who already live here and improving internal migration (encouraging skilled city people to move to regional areas, etc.).
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