Don't worry, vote early
I'll be in Sydney this weekend at an architecture conference. No, don’t ask me why; I’m not really sure either. Long story short, it means I’m gonna put my vote in early. That doesn’t make me special. It seems like most people have already cast their ballots.
I remember having a really bad feeling before the election that Morrison won. We were having a party that night, and a couple of days out, I started to get anxious, thinking it would all end in disaster.
Should’ve listened to my gut. Worst election party ever.
I remember waking up around two or three in the morning, absolutely seething with rage and loathing, completely unable to get back to sleep. Eventually, I got up, went down to my office, and smashed out three-quarters of a screenplay just to distract myself.
This Saturday night, I’m expecting—and hoping—to sleep a lot better.
I’ve got a panel at the conference late in the afternoon, just before the polls close, I think. After that, I’ll probably find a bar somewhere, grab a drink, and watch the results roll in.
I'm voting today because I have to drive my mum to the doctor, which punches a bit of a hole through the back end of my workday. So I figured, might as well achieve something useful for the afternoon that’ll take the pressure off later in the week.
Oh, and just a heads-up: if you’re slipping the boot into the horror spud before Saturday, remember—you may need to take your ID to vote early this time.
License, passport, something official. That’s what I heard.
Voted at the super crowded West End station. No ID required. ALP & Greens outnumbered LNP like the French at Agincourt. But we all know what happened to them.
I've been at pre-poll in WA for the last week and a bit, and can reassure you that no ID is required. I've also voted early, and the process was just like election day except no democracy sausage. At least I can get one on election day when I'm handing out how to vote cards 😬
Be prepared to wait in a queue though; the numbers going through pre-poll are INSANE. I'm volunteering at a pre-poll booth that services 4 electorates, Curtin, Cowan, Perth and Moore, and the lovely AEC people have been reporting 2000k plus numbers all week. Which is medium sized booth on election day sorts of numbers according to my campaign manager. Unprecedented. Saturday was a short day, 7 hours rather than 9 hours, and it almost beat the record set the day before (Thursday, because Friday was closed for ANZAC Day). It would have, if it had been open for the same period.
Yesterday the booth processed 2600 voters; today was 2700. The lovely AEC supervisor in charge expects to crack 3000 on Thursday or Friday. He says that the demand they're experiencing is 3 times what they had forecast. Apparently they went through their entire 9 day allocation of pre-poll ballots in the first 5 days and had to order more in (we've not run out, they've managed their stock very well).
And turning up early won't save you; people have been queuing from before the pre-poll centre opens at 8:30am. The party and independent volunteers were joking today that at the rate this is going there won't be anyone left to vote on Saturday. According to the experts high numbers of pre-polling votes indicates bad news for the blunder-spud.
I can report that the mood is very much get it out of the way; the pseudo election campaign that started in January has not endeared either of the two majors to the electorate now that it's May and we're finally going to the polls. And the mood seems very "anyone but Labor, but DEFINITELY not the Libs." If I was forced to pick a winner based on my entirely unscientific anecdotal observations, I would say that Labor will definitely be returned, and possibly even in majority.
My favourite part of pre-poll has been watching people hand back Liberal HTVs once they realise which party it is, and my favourite pre-poll encounter was the lady who recoiled from a Liberal volunteer like he was radioactive and went "Oh NO... you're into nuclear!" He was astonished, and it gave me an opportunity to sidle in and inform her the Democrats helped negotiate the federal nuclear ban in the 1990s, which she was DELIGHTED to discover, and promptly took my HTV. It's the little things 🤣