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One of the things that was remarkable about this campaign was how overwhelming the Yes campaign's resources were. Over the course of the campaign I saw ads and billboards and people handing out pamphlets and even a choir promoting the Yes case. In comparison I saw exactly one (1) bumper sticker for No and nothing else. At the polling booth there were half a dozen volunteers for Yes and the whole fence was blanketed with their signage while No had one guy with one sign. And I've heard there were other polling places that didn't even have that.
I really wish people would learn that all this campaign paraphernalia is completely worthless, and arguably counterproductive. It was extremely clear the people with money and power wanted a Yes victory, but that doesn't actually convince anyone.
The proposal was the result of starting with the idea of putting Aboriginals in the constitution and then jerry-rigging it into an advisory body after people complained that they wanted something practical, but also trying not to do anything concrete or specific that could offend someone. It was a mess of an idea and really someone should have had the balls to stop this process before it got to this point instead of shunting off the responsibility of putting it down to the voting public.
I don't feel any joy in this result, though it's the outcome I voted for. We've had a bunch of angst and drama for no gain, and it seems clear no one is going to learn anything from the experience. All the talking heads are busy convincing themselves that the problem is somehow the sales job and not the product. No one is even thinking to ask if maybe it just wasn't a bit implausible that you needed a constitutional amendment to create an advisory committee, or that an advisory committee was going to somehow fix all the massive problems Aboriginal Australia faces. Maybe we just need to lecture people not to be racist harder next time. Yeah, that'll work.
...Australia allows campaigning at the polling place? That's an absolute no-no in Finland, you can't even walk in to vote wearing your preferred candidate's pin.
There's a 6 metre buffer zone outside the actual school hall/whatever that is being used as a polling place. So it's routine to run a gauntlet of campaigners trying to shove paper in your hand as you walk through the gate. It annoys a lot of people.
There's an old Chaser sketch exploring different ways to try to get through unscathed.
Only six meters? In Texas the electioneering exclusion zone is the same as the exclusion zone for guns, and people are regularly sent to the bathroom to turn political shirts inside out before being allowed to vote. Political action committees produce lists of endorsed candidates on unofficial letterhead(that is it doesn’t say ‘vote for real true conservatives’) so they can be carried into the polling booth.
Yeah, only six metres. And you're allowed to take party political material in with you - it's routine for parties to give out "how to vote" cards recommending an ordering of candidates (e.g. us first, our allies second, weirdos and fringe candidates in the middle, and our enemies at the bottom) to voters walking in.
(I know you specifically don't need to know this, but for non-Australians reading, I hope this is helpful.)
I'll add that the how-to-vote cards do have a practical function. Firstly, Australia's voting system is relatively complex compared to countries like the US, so having a little more advice on how to correctly fill out a ballot seems reasonable. Secondly, we have preferential voting, and one of the purposes of how-to-vote cards is to explain how the party would like you to vote.
Let me give a specific example - here's a Labor how-to-vote card for the 2015 Canning by-election. For a vote in Australia to be valid, it has to number every box in order. If you just write a '1' in the box of your favourite candidate, your vote will not count. However, there are twelve candidates in Canning! Twelve! Is the average voter really going to research every one of them and rank them in order? The how-to-vote card tells you how the Labor Party would like you to rank all the candidates. If you already know you want to vote for Labor, why not follow their advice?
Canning is an extreme case - there usually aren't twelve candidates. But anecdotally, I find that in my electorate it is usually somewhere between five and seven, and that's still a lot. Thus every party gives out cards like this.
The better cards, in my opinion, also give a little bit of information on the candidate's or party's platform, but that's up to the party. Still, they do have a useful role in educating and streamlining the voting process.
That said one worthwhile sidenote is that because a lot of voters just follow the order that their preferred party says, the people who decide the orders on the how-to-vote cards can have a lot of influence - this is where so-called preference deals can have a big influence. Often the parties will negotiate with other behind the scenes a bit for their preferences, and it can have a significant impact.
Obviously none of this matters for a referendum, because there aren't any parties and a referendum is a straight Yes/No question, but it is an interesting quirk of the way the Australian electoral system works.
It is hilarious that preferential voting which was a Reddit fan favourite of 2010s and was surely going to herald true democracy…. ended up creating more backroom politics
It also succeeds at doing the thing it is meant to do - preventing vote-splitting from making third parties counterproductive.
E.g. the seat of Pumicestone in the 2017 Queensland election gave the most votes to the left wing Labor candidate (the amusingly named Michael Hoogwaerts), with 35%. The right wing vote was split between the Liberal National candidate with 30% and the even more right wing One Nation candidate with 23%.
FPTP would have given the seat to Labor, despite most voters voting for a right wing candidate. Instead, the Liberal National won it on preferences.
Under FPTP almost all conservative voters would have voted for National. UKIP didn’t win a parliamentary seat for that reason.
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