Election Day: A Festival of Mild Civic Anxiety

Election Day: A Festival of Mild Civic Anxiety

Come for the Democracy, Stay for the Snacks, Leave Quietly Having Possibly Decided the Government

Federal election day in Australia is a Saturday – a scheduling decision of profound democratic wisdom, allowing working Australians to discharge their constitutional obligations without taking leave, and ensuring that the sausage sizzle operates during hours when the scout group running it can be confident of significant foot traffic. It is, by the standards of democratic participation globally, a well-organised, good-natured, and surprisingly pleasant way to determine the composition of the national government.

Polling booths open at 8am and close at 6pm. They are staffed by Australian Electoral Commission officials who are unfailingly polite, impeccably neutral, and possessed of an institutional commitment to procedural correctness that borders on the meditative. They have seen everything. They will see it again. They will mark your name off the roll with the same measured efficiency whether you arrive in a suit, pyjamas, or – in at least one documented case – a full dinosaur costume, because the Australian Electoral Commission’s position on costume voting is that the franchise is the franchise.

The Physical Process: Democracy in Eight Steps

The process of voting in Australia involves the following sequence, here reproduced for students who have not yet turned eighteen and for international readers who find it remarkable that this is how it works:

1. Attend the polling booth. Any polling booth in your state will do for the Senate; your enrolled booth for the House, or a declaration vote elsewhere.
2. State your name and address. Do not state it too confidently. This creates suspicion.
3. Have your name marked off the roll. Observe the official do this with a ruler. Wonder briefly why a ruler. Accept that there is probably a reason.
4. Receive your ballot papers. The House of Representatives ballot is manageable. The Senate ballot is the size of a small tablecloth and contains, in a large state at a competitive election, up to 100+ candidates. First-time voters frequently pale at this point.
5. Enter the booth. The booths are cardboard. This feels appropriate – the whole enterprise has the cheerful improvised quality of a school fete, which several of the booths literally are.
6. Complete the ballot. Number every box above the line for the Senate, or number at least twelve boxes below the line, or, if you are completing the House ballot, number every single box from 1 to however many candidates are running, because preferential voting is thorough.
7. Fold the ballot. Deposit it in the correct box. There are multiple boxes. The officials will guide you if you attempt to put the Senate paper in the House box, which happens more than the AEC publicly admits.
8. Exit the booth. Purchase a sausage.

The How-to-Vote Card: Democracy’s Cheat Sheet

Outside every polling booth, volunteers from each party and candidate stand at a respectful distance – mandated by law – distributing how-to-vote cards: small printed guides showing voters exactly how their party recommends they number their ballot. These cards exist because preferential voting, in a large field, is genuinely complicated, and because parties have a strong interest in ensuring that their supporters’ preferences flow to allied candidates rather than being exhausted on independent hopefuls or, in one memorable Senate race, the Australian Cycling Party.

A majority of voters take the how-to-vote card. A significant minority take cards from multiple parties and then use none of them. A small but philosophically important minority wave off all cards with the expression of people who have made up their minds and do not require assistance from anyone wearing a rosette. This last group includes the entire demographic of Australians over 70 who consider the how-to-vote card an insult to their intelligence and say so, at some length, to the volunteer offering it.

The Count: Long, Careful, and Occasionally Still Going on Monday

Votes are counted on election night, a process that produces definitive House results for most seats within hours and Senate results within weeks – the proportional allocation of Senate positions being a calculation of such intricacy that it requires dedicated software, significant time, and a philosophical acceptance that Australian democracy, having concluded its vigorous six-week sprint, is perfectly comfortable with a long slow walk to the finish line.

Preference distributions in close House races can take hours. Close Senate contests have taken months. The 2013 Western Australian Senate election result was so contested – ultimately decided by 14 votes after a recount that discovered 1,375 ballot papers had gone missing – that a fresh half-Senate election was held in 2014, producing a different result, at a cost of $21 million, a sequence of events that every electoral reform advocate cites immediately and that the Electoral Commission describes, with professional understatement, as "a learning experience."

"I came for democracy," an exit poll respondent told researchers outside a Wollongong polling booth in 2022. "I stayed for the snacks. I left having voted informally because I numbered the boxes in the wrong order and panicked. I feel civically engaged."

The AEC considers this a success. On the available evidence, they are correct.

For the international perspective on what election day looks like when sausage sizzles are not a feature and turnout is consequently 58%, consult The London Prat’s election day dispatches – prat.uk – from a country where polling stations are sometimes pubs and where this is considered an incentive structure superior to snags in bread.

See also Newsthump on the existential crisis that British voters experience when confronted with a ballot paper containing more than three names and no guidance whatsoever.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com