Working the System...

[thorfinn]

The Senate's the Senate no matter where you are (well, each State has a different bunch of Senators), but the House of Reps has separate electorates based along geographical lines. Fiddling with those lines in order to benefit the sitting government is something that's been done a lot. It's got a name, Gerrymandering.

I think one of the reasons for the Liberal Party's massive victory is the tendency of non-conservatives to cluster in the "funky" suburbs. Conservatives are more distributed, so most electorates wind up with more conservatives in them. That's bad. So...

If you currently live in a safe Labor seat, consider moving to a marginal or Liberal held seat within the next three years, in time for the next election. It's time to Gerrymander from the grassroots.

Crossposted to:

• aussielj as [Politics - last one from me] Working the system....
• aus_politics as Working the system...
• aust_politics as Working the system...
• thealp as Working the system...
• australian_left as Working the system...

PS: Spread the word. Grassroots Gerrymandering Is In.

Comments

[lirion.livejournal.com]

You jsut reminded me to go look at the specific reuslts for my electorate. Which has been a safe Labour seat for decades. however, for the first time this election there was a Jewish candidate for both Liberal and Labour parties. Given that said electorate has the second highest Jewish population in Australia, this was improtant. Labour still holds the seat, but only through preferences flowing through, Libs got mroe direct votes.
Despite the liberal candidate being the popular dj of choice for Ba Mitzvahs...
But yes, I was wondering how many people were voting labour to vote Jewish...
Grteens are picking up in this electorate too. But next election if I'm still in this general area... I don't think this is a 'safe' labour seat anymore...

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Hehe, you must be in the same electorate as me :)

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Thats a scarily interesting idea :)

[thorfinn]

Yar, I think it's a good one. Spread the word. Grassroots Gerrymandering Is In.

[dcarson.livejournal.com]

Interesting, my seat was 70% Labor on the 2 party preferred, they can get by without me. :-)

[thorfinn]

Precisely the point... that's nearly 20% "wasted" in that electorate. Imagine that 20% distributed over five of the marginal seats...

[frou-frou.livejournal.com]

oh no! don't make me live amongst the Liberals!

[dcarson.livejournal.com]

Move, enrol, and then move back! (but don't change your enrolment)

[thorfinn]

Unfortunately runs the high risk of having you wind up on no electoral roll at all, unless you move out only in the last month or two of the election date.

[trayce.livejournal.com]

Ive been at the wrong address for five years or more and I always succeed voting, I just tell them the "wrong" address. Mind you that is in the same electorate...

[thorfinn]

You've also just been lucky. They send around forms to every household, saying "who should be enrolled here?". If one of your old addresses sends in a form, and you haven't sent in a new enrolment, that's it, you're off the roll.

[yak-boy.livejournal.com]

I don't believe I've ever seen such a form.

However, another risk is that, if you are renting, the Bond Authority inform the AEC that you have signed a new lease (and have therefore moved house).

[gths.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I voted absentee in the 1999 referendum (since I was stuck in Surry Hills for a few months) and prior to the 2002 election they sent a form to my address just to confirm that I still lived there for the roll.

[yak-boy.livejournal.com]

Nice icon.

[thorfinn]

You only have to find a spot that's 50% Liberal...

[politas.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm about to do the reverse. Been living in a Lib held seat (Hume) for five years, now moving back in to Canberra.

My vote in Hume was just one drop taken away from a pretty big bucket. Alby Schultz is pretty safe in his seat.

I tried sending him a letter once, urging him to think carefully about copyright issues, and his response was to get a policy statement from the relevant minister, which was subsequently over-ridden by the FTA.

Representative Democracy? Hah!

[thorfinn]

Well, if it's a safe Lib seat, then probably moving out is a good thing too. Might as well concentrate the Libs, as well as dispersing the Labor vote.

[lukeii.livejournal.com]

Wherever I move, my party isn't that likely to win the seat.

BTW: Visiting O'Malley's Bar was one of the highlights of my visit to Sydney a few months ago.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

Come to Grayndler (Sydney inner west) - we had very strong Green voting for NSW state elections, and a nicely high vote for federal. We only missed out on a Green mayor in the council elections because the big boys did a deal to get the independant in the spot instead.

Maybe we could get all the Greens to move to Grayndler, in fact. We have some very nice green candidates here. I'd like my suburb to be seriously Green. You can camp in my backyard?

[daern.livejournal.com]

Well, when purchasing a house, I kinda doubt that "politics of the neighbours" will be high on my list of things to think about in deciding whether to buy or not. Although, I was just thinking on the way home that there was no need to be angry at all the people in the street, as they also were walking in a safe Labour seat; and hence possibly not to blame. No. I don't think I'll go throw myself into a marginal or Liberal seat, thanks. Would be perhaps more effective to get a job doing to the Gerrymandering (a kind of sleeper spy-like position) - Now would that be AEC?

Hmm...Does politics enter into the Sims (TM)?

[thorfinn]

Well, if it helps, there is strong evidence that marginal seats get way more funding attention... (Hey, look everyone else is out for themselves, you should consider it too.) But the main thing is, if you have a choice between equal houses, but one is in a safe Labor and the other is in a marginal seat or a lightly held Liberal seat, take the latter, if you want to maximise the impact of your vote.

[puzzlement.livejournal.com]

As you've probably heard elsewhere, moving to a marginal in Sydney basically means moving 50km out from the centre to huge mortgage land, buying a car for everyone in the household and joining the 5am commute trying to beat the motorway peak hour. I salute anyone who's willing to spend that amount of money for one vote in a marginal seat :)

Liberal is easier, but it does mean.... da da da da.... crossing the Harbour.

[thorfinn]

Well, things aren't that bad here in Melbourne... Still, anyone willing to do it, should go for it.

[i-ate-my-crusts.livejournal.com]

Strangely, I've been pondering exactly this thing. The lovely Corinna lives in the seat of Paramatta, which is borderline veering on Labor this election, after going to the Libs last time. I could make a difference there.

[thorfinn]

Do it, do it! And it's Parramatta, BTW... I used to live there. It's not too bad, particularly if you can get to the station via a reasonably safe and well lit route.

[mireille21.livejournal.com]

Did everybody I knwo used to live in Parramatta? Thorf! I didn't know you lived there. We should chat more sometime. :-)

[jeshyr]

If you're gonna do it effectively, construct a list of seats which are held by the libs, and arrange them by margin, smallest to largest. Post it as a "We need you to move HERE!" list, with the slimmest-held seat the highest priority as needing people to move there.

Ugh, I think I back-assed my logic there. My point was if 500 people move to a seat held by 10,000 it's wasted, but if 500 move to a seat held by 499 every vote COUNTS. So move to a marginal lib seat in preference to a safe lib seat, and a marginal labor seat in preference to a safe labour seat (to help shore it up), etc etc.

I really think www.grassrootsgerrymander.org.au needs to happen ... want help? I LOVE this idea. Point out that we're not asking anybody to do radical stuff if they don't want, but if (eg) tehy have 2 houses to consider and they're in different electorates, they might want to look up your list, etc etc etc.

There's a lot of stuff that could be done here. As in propoganda in favour of it.

Smart boyo, I loves ya!

Hugs,
Ricky

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

In trying to extend this so you can run the entire country, have you considered that you may be in a minority?

[thorfinn]

Yes. I don't believe that the non-conservatives are in an actual serious minority, though. I need to go through the results in more detail, and as rickybuchanan has suggested, I will need to go and come up with a list of electorates and suchlike, but my strong suspicion is that the Liberal/National party is winning not on pure numbers, but by having a better distribution of voters. I may be wrong, but I'll find out in a few weeks time when the final counts are in. Then I'll crunch the numbers and see if the suspicion is borne out.

[stealthflower.livejournal.com]

You know, I was thinking the same thing yesterday, and was going to try to find the time to head over to the aec's website this avo...

[morgan303.livejournal.com]

Funny, I didn't know it was an actual *thing* you could do...I was talking to patchworkkid the night before last about registering in a marginal seat for the next election. Like at my sister's house in Hampton. I was saying we should organise a bunch of us to do that. I'm glad more people have had the same idea.:)

[grey-evil-twin.livejournal.com]

My local member is Bronwyn Bishop and we did the good work of recording a 0.8% swing against her. Unfortunately, not enough to fuck her off, but it's a start. The demographics of the area are changing, and hopefully the voting preferences of the locals will change too. And THEN we can fuck her off.

[mireille21.livejournal.com]

This was one of the most frustrating things for me. I really felt like my vote didn't count, we're in a labour safe seat, which had a small swing towards the Liberals and Greens and away from Labour, but not enough to make any difference. Made me wish I was still back in the electorate of Parramatta.

[redcountess]

You have a very good point. David and I re-enrolled so we could register as overseas voters, but we had to enrol at our last addresses in Melbourne - Oakleigh South (in Hotham, Simon Crean's seat) and Fitzroy (Melbourne, Lindsay Tanner's seat). The latter had a swing *towards* him, mainly due to a lot of people giving up on the Dems.

Oh, and you must also encourage people who live in safe Liberal seats (like Higgins) to move to marginal ones.

[belegdel.livejournal.com]

I hate to rain on the parade (and I'll fight down my oh-so-goth black despair for a bit) but if the Libs have control of both houses and they are into Gerrymandering - expect the boundaries to continue to move.
IIRC from the Bjelke-Peterson years, the boundaries moved fast enough that the only people who had any opportunity to make plans were the government arranging the gerrymander. It's part of what makes it so fucking effective.

(black despair on) Hell, I doubt we'll even have the same political system next election 'round. You just watch the bastard mess with that along with everything else.

[orethule.livejournal.com]

dashing in and not reading the other posts - if you want to grass root gerrymander, make damn sure you are not on the marketing databases, else they will just adjust the boundaries to accomodate you.