australian democracy - how I love it!

[tielan]

Australia: the only democracy where you get a snag (sausage/hot-dog) and a lamington (chocolate sponge cake) at the polling booth.

Okay, not really, but most polling places are public primary schools, which the government of both stripes generally scants when it comes to financing. (The plebs don't need to be prop'ly educated, after all! They're there to become good little workers, unthinking and obedient!) So the local schools tend to run sausage sizzles and bake sales when it's polling day.

The Twitter tag #ausvotes is moving pretty fast right now. Trending, even!

I haven't gone to vote yet - not until about 5pm, when the volunteers have wearied and I can simply wave them off as they try to push the voting plans into my hands.

Not that it makes too much difference here in my electorate: politically, it swings Liberal (conservative) every year. We haven't been offered so much as an electoral mung bean, let alone a whole carrot, for the last fifty years!

Comments

[briar_pipe]

Ah, voting. ^_^

Do you guys get the day off over there? I've struggled with timing here, since if you go first thing in the morning the line is long, and if you go right after work, the line is long, and mostly when the line is not long is when I'm working.

I guess at least long lines mean people are voting? ^_^;;

[tielan]

Australian voting is always held on a Saturday. They can do this, because we're one of the very few (if not the only) democracy where voting is compulsory.

So every Australian citizen goes out on Election Saturday unless they've already cast their vote days earlier.

Hm. I wonder what people in nursing homes and such do - like my grandmother, who barely remembers me, let alone anything else happening in the outside world.

[briar_pipe]

I think you guys may be the only one. At least, I haven't heard that about anywhere else.

What we did here for the census was go into facilities like that to talk to people directly, so it's possible that they have pre-arranged systems set up for absentee voting for those folks who aren't mobile enough to be piled in a van (which is the other thing we do here - vans go around and pick people up at their houses if they call a number, but I think some of these are run by the parties themselves, so it's not such a perfect system).