The New South Wales state elections took place yesterday and,although I am not eligible to vote yet, I went along with Ian to see if voting was any different here than in the UK.
It was completely different! Voting is compulsory in Australia so the turnout was a world away from the slow dribble of people wandering into the local church hall in England. Polling day was a Saturday too and, as with most events in Australia, had something of a party atmosphere about it with sausage sizzles and bouncy castles at many polling stations.
Voters can go to any polling station in their electorate to vote and there was even a website to visit (sausagesizzle.com.au) where you could find out which polling station was going to be laying on the best entertainment!
However, voters need a bit of sustenance here as voting itself is exhausting. When they arrive, the voters are given instructions on the best way to vote for each party. When voting for the Lower House (like the Commons) they can either choose to use preferential voting below the line where they number their choices or, if they would prefer not to do that, they can choose to vote above the line. This is selecting just one candidate which will automatically add the preferences chosen by that party, for example, the Labor party would have the Greens as their second preference, the Fishing and Shooters Party third all the way down to the Liberal Party as their last choice. Luckily there were only 5 candidates for Port Stephens.
Then, as if that wasn't complicated enough, we move on to the huge ballot paper Ian is holding up. This is for the Upper House (like the Lords). Again the electorate can choose to vote above the line, accepting the preferences of the party they have chosen or they can number their preferences themselves below the line where there were........wait for it....280 candidates, so you could go into your polling booth and number all the way from 1 to 280, no wonder there was a queue!