I ♥ democracy

And so off I went this morning, a chipper citizen eager to cast her first country vote here in the Heartlands. In St Kilda, I always waited until 5 minutes to closing time, hopped on my bike, barrelled through the weary leaflet folk still left standing, and did my civic duty. But today, I wanted to check out the local election scene.

The first noticeable difference was that there was much more cake involved. There were huge slabs of the stuff on tables of all political persuasions. This feed-them-sugar strategy had me worrying about whether people voted according to the cocoa content of Judy’s or Beryl’s secret recipes rather than the worthiness of our often doughy politicians.

The second big difference was that the demographic wasn’t skewered towards trendy young arty things and professional young couples with 4WD prams intent on gentrifying the world in their image. Instead, there was a lovely mix of different age groups and social classes, with a few crusty old country codgers thrown in.

Unfortunately, as much as I ♥ democracy, I’m less enamoured with bureaucracy. Despite the fact that I’d changed my address details, and despite the fact that I had a letter confirming the change, I was not on the electoral roll. Apparently, a nice volunteer told me, they had had many such omissions (a conspiracy of some sort?). So alas, I had to fill out forms, and finally, fifteen months after leaving St Kilda, I had to cast an absentee vote for Port Melbourne.

Where's the tribalism in that?

It just won't be the same watching the results on telly.