Election night party - come revel in the vengeance.

Wild stab in the dark here Jakez – Crown v Warden?

Mutley: you’re right, our bad. We should have said “informal vote”. The true donkey vote is already largely cancelled out by the Robson rotation method I guess.

Jesus Christ I need to get out of law school. I don’t know why I thought he would actually state the case on the radio, let alone whether you would take note.

I’ll track him down and see what info I can get.

Gungahlin Al said :

“Is this the end of the donkey vote?”

No – you could still merely drop your bar code thingo in the ballot box without completing the online form. Once ticked off the Palm Pilot, you are accepted to have “voted”. Not that I’m encouraging that at all.

Interestingly, in a discussion about voluntary voting on 666 yesterday, columnist Ian Warden conceded that he was the person responsible in his younger days for pushing that issue through the courts, gaining a ruling that merely getting one’s name ticked off was “voting” even if one did not fill out a ballot paper. He also admitted that it was an embarrassment to him, now that he’s come to value his right to vote more.

I would very much like to know the name of that case because it flies against every single other case I have ever seen.

Is it an ACT case?

That’s not a donkey vote. A donkey vote is where you just number them in the order they are in on the ballot paper.

Don’t scan 1st time Thumper. Take code card, drop in box, donkey vote.
So the option is there, but I value my vote. So it’s nice to know that my intentions can never be brought into question by some scrutineer.

Jonathon would disagree with me vociferously, but bring on computerised voting across the board in my opinion. Kill off the late election nights wouldn’t it? “It’s 6.01 pm. Welcome to the evening news, and here are the election results…”

“Is this the end of the donkey vote?”

No – you could still merely drop your bar code thingo in the ballot box without completing the online form. Once ticked off the Palm Pilot, you are accepted to have “voted”. Not that I’m encouraging that at all.

Interestingly, in a discussion about voluntary voting on 666 yesterday, columnist Ian Warden conceded that he was the person responsible in his younger days for pushing that issue through the courts, gaining a ruling that merely getting one’s name ticked off was “voting” even if one did not fill out a ballot paper. He also admitted that it was an embarrassment to him, now that he’s come to value his right to vote more.

seriously – is this the end of the donkey vote??

Dropped into the Gungahlin pre-poll centre and got my voting squared away today.
Great to use the computerised voting.

I prefer to use prepolling rather than facing queues on the Saturdays, but it always *feels* a bit like your vote isn’t counted, because the prepoll and absentee votes are the last to get counted – usually after the outcome is known from votes cast on the day.

This time I know my vote will be tallied seconds after 6pm. Not rational I know, but…

And the computerised voting was straightforward. No modern touch screens or anything, but simple to follow and use. After finding your name on a Palm Pilot that updates online straightaway (no more “vote early and vote often” I’m afraid!), they give you a little card with a barcode. You swipe the code in the booth, cursor back and forth, up and down, until you’ve numbered all of them (or less if you are that way inclined), punch Finished. It resorts them into numerical order for a final check. You swipe the bar code again, then drop the barcode card in the “ballot box” – don’t take it with you. Done. No mistakes, No risk of informal vote or misinterpretation.

In over twenty years of voting in elections I have always been critical of people who say things like “Who cares?” or “Whatever, it makes no difference”. I would argue to the point of almost coming to blows. “I don’t care who you vote for…just take an interest…it is the most important thing you can do”, is what I always said.

But finally in this election I can see what they mean.

There is not a single candidate in Molongolo who I can be bothered giving a vote to, there is not a single party or person in the ACT who I think will make any difference.

This election has really brought out the dregs of the political sphere, right across the board.

As I said to a candidate the other day at the Gungahlin shops:

“I think you will fit in well in the ACT Legistlative Assembly”

“Oh why?”

“Well, it’s the ACT Legislative Assembly…it’s not like that’s a real government. And you are from the ******. It’s not like that’s a real party”

****** Insert name of any ACT party, major or minor ******

yeah – why didn’t we all just not vote at the first self government election debacle. Instead of voting for ‘no self govt’ candidates and the party party.