Down the Pole
10:50PM, March 25th, 2007
Before the matinee performance yesterday, I went out and performed my democratic duty by numbering a few boxes, then jamming lots of paper into a small hole.
Entering the polling station, I faced the gladiator-esque gauntlet of how to vote cards like a man. I took one (didn’t look at it), but still felt like I needed an oversized foam cylinder to fend off the outstretched arms. Right at the very front, Labour and Liberal went head to head. After everyone in front of me took a Labour card, the Liberal man dropped his shoulders and conceeded, “Right… okay.” A tale of things to come indeed.
What hit me whilst standing in line was that everyone votes. Finding myself standing in line with people who can surely not have had the mental capacity to digest the information being presented to them, one can only HOPE they gave donkey votes or drew a giant penis on their ballot form, as Ash details*.
When I finally reached one of the tables, one of the officials asked if an older lady could move in front of me. Fine, I said. She had a scraggly beard, after all. Anyway, after before she had realised she wasn’t there to pick up the prescription or put on the weekly lotto ticket, three hundred thousand senior citizens pushed in in front of me. Thankfully a rather hip young lady at the next table over saw what had happened and sorted me out.
It did make me wonder though… why would you be in such a rush to vote if you’re going to die soon anyway?
*: This post started as a comment on Ash’s blog.
Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments
(reset monthly)
A twenty-two year old ex-student, musician, performer with a degree in creative arts with little idea what to do with it.
Zoe A’s Blog
Hell in a Handbag - David Cerda
MelbourneLoft
Brisbane Window
eMackinations
Much Ado About Sumthin
The Munkey Can Type
The Other Andrew
Jellyfish Online
James O’Brien
Kit’s Blog
Brownie
Tammy’s Turns
He Blogged Himself (Bevis)
Backflip Boy (Kevin)
2008:
J
F
M
A
M
J J A S O N D
2007:
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
2006:
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
2005:
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
2004:
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
2003:
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
2002:
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
2001:
J F M A M J J A S
O
N
D
Subscribe to RSS feed
Built by hand for Wordpress
Admin entrance
All content, design and images
© Good Boy Media 2001-2007
The perfect plan on election day:
1: have no idea who you are going to vote for until you arrive at the polling station;
2: enter the school via the back gate to avoid being given any information on who is actually pleading for your vote;
3: skulk away after it all and have an argument with your friend who owns a small business and thinks that the Workchoices legislation is a great idea;
4: drink heavily - this can be done at any stage during the day. The earlier, the better:
5: vote early and vote often.
Here endeth the lesson.
Comment by Kevin — March 26, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
It’s Lab O r Tyson. You silly, silly boy.
Comment by Rebecca — March 26, 2007 @ 7:25 pm
Cheers for the link… the old people were by far the hardest to deal with on the day. You would think they would understand how the system works, surely they have voted quite a few times before… like sure, maybe I could understand the 18 year olds being confused, but middle aged and older people who were completely baffled by the experience of voting were the ones that confused me the most!
Comment by Ashlee — March 27, 2007 @ 11:42 pm
Kevin - I dare say some of these people had been drunk since 1974.
Rebecca - How do you explain Big L Liberal versus little l liberal, then?
Ashlee - I wondered the same thing. I mean, it’s really not a complicated process. It’s all pretty well explained on the sheet, and there were instructions everywhere!
Comment by Tyson — March 29, 2007 @ 10:41 am
I thought everyone voted too, until I came to work on the day of this last election. I postal voted, so I avoided the gauntlet. But it seems several people at work avoided it by simply ‘forgetting’. I overheard a man in the coffee shop saying that he avoided it by never having been on the electoral role in the first place. I don’t understand why people wouldn’t want to vote.
Comment by Zoe — March 29, 2007 @ 9:36 pm