Labor First and Last.
Got up today to a rather chilly morning - dropped to -1C around these parts. Thankfully a bunch of folk around the late 1800's decided to keep trees here - you really appreciate the frost protection provided by towering gums at times like this. That soccer pitch I passed on the way to work, with its own personal metre-thick blanket of fog, might have fared a little better with a few trees around.
Even more chilling was diving into the ACTU campaign manual the Liberals are busy crowing about. Turns out, there are two marginal seats in Victoria they'll be campaigning heavily on. And I'm in one of them. La Trobe. 5.8%. A margin of 5,176 votes.
Translation: every vote counts. Despite my disdain for the ALP as they stand, in order to ensure the removal of the Howard government, I'm going to have to put them first in the lower house. Maybe it's unprincipled to put Labor first in the Rep's, and last in the Senate, and as much as I hate getting sucked into the lesser evil mentality, I don't see any other choice.
But it'll take some serious wooing for them to get out of last place in the upper house. The will to protest is strong.
posted by Larry Bonewend @ 12:39 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Wow that's a slim margin... but yes, even a 'lite' version of howard with a bunch of unions to slap him around and keep him onside is better than the howard we've got now.
I don't feel particularly free with my vote though. Dictatorships are honest - there is sometimes even an actual gun pointed at your head.
But my vote is being influenced by a threat as well (thankfully not quite as harsh).
I don't see how it could be a good thing if we vote for parties that don't represent us best, just because of their size.
Re: lower house voting, if I may be so bold ...
IMHO there's never any reason to put a major party first on a lower house ballot. I always give #1 to one of the wacky choices that are guaranteed to lose (e.g. Socialist Alliance or the Christian Democrats) and then put my real choice as second.
#1 will be knocked out quickly, so you're really voting for #2, but you have the self-satisfaction of saying you didn't put them first. Also, the bastards get less taxpayer-funded campaign money (about $2 per first-preference vote).
It's a good idea - wouldn't really work for the Greens, they'll be knocked off last. So it'd have to be:
1. Ridiculously unlikely party. (Socialist Alliance should be safe.)
2. Prefered major party.
3. Actual party. (Unless covered above).
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