Election /iːˌlekʃən, ə-/ (n.)

With polling places across the country opening at 8:00am (and closing at 6:00pm. 6:00pm. Remember this. VOTE BEFORE 6:00PM, OR ELSE) it seems like a reasonably good opportunity to explain how this whole voting caper works here.

So!

1 - Australian Federal Parliament: a Primer

The Australian Federal Parliament is made up of two houses. These are known as the House of Representatives (or Lower House) and the Senate (or Upper House). Elections are held every three years.

1.1 - Australian House of Representatives

( Here be background. )

2 - But isn't this about elections?

Indeed it is! So, without further ado...

2.1 - Voting Equipment and Procedures

( So you want to elect a Government... )

3 - How to Vote

So, you know how they hand out those 'how to vote' cards at a legally-required distance from polling places?

This isn't quite one of those. Let's call this "How to Vote Like active_apathy", which is both a semi-practical demonstration of how to fill in a ballot paper and a sweeping statement on a teensytinylittle bit of Australian politics. Whee.

3.1 - The House of Representatives

I'll get... a staggering four candidates in my electorate. Four. Yay.

( Very Left! Left! Right! Scarily right! And almost in that order. )

3.2 - The Senate

( Lisa Milat? On my ballot paper? It's more likely than I thought. )

And there you have it, the electoral process at work. Come back after the counting for 'Yaaaaaay!', 'NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!', or '...recounts?!' depending on the outcome.

...and now she dead from vote.

So, showers. The shower is meant to be a peaceful place, a calm and peaceful place from which you emerge happy and clean.

This morning, I had spiders in my shower. There were two that I noticed right away - a huntsman, for they are big, and a white-tail, for they are evil. And they were there, both of them, on the floor of the shower, just kind of staring at each other.

There's me, armed with nothing, just kind of staring at these spiders in a fuzzy half-awake state of sleeeeeepiness, and that's when I notice: there's another fuzzy looking little dot in the middle that doesn't belong. A fuzzy little dot with eight tiny little legs, exactly halfway between the big spiders who - quite obviously - had things to sort out between themselves like custody arrangements and who gets to keep the web.

So, I did the only sane thing it's possible to do when faced with the Albus Severus of the arachnid world - backed away slowly, went and had a cup of tea, and quietly hoped they'd disappear before I went back.

(They did.)



Also! As an alternative to the previous election post (and because voting queues are really quite dull), I have a summary of the electoral process in a form more appropriate to the Internets.

OMG constitution bling bling.
THIS IS DEMOCRACYYYYYYYYYY!!1!11!!!1!
Someone set up us the polls.
That'll give you, er, voters.
Got ballots?
I'm in ur booth, electin' ur candidates.
My candidates iz votede on yey.
The ballots, let me not show you them.
At PM 6:00, counting was beginning.
I, for one, welcome our new overlords-elect.¹

And that's about it for now. Creepy spiders. Creepy.

1. Unless they're the Coalition's overlords-elect, in which case there is no welcome.