At the 2004 election, some 69,000 Australians voted overseas. That’s almost an entire extra electorate voting outside the country.
This poses a unique challenge for smaller parties trying to break the Labor / Liberal duopoly. It’s extremely important for us to have direct contact with voters because, without being prompted to think about other options, many people will vote for one of the big old parties. But if they are prompted to think about the Greens, they are far more likely to give us their first preference vote.
That explains, by the way, why our polling figures are so much lower in Newspoll than any of the others - because Newspoll is the only one which doesn’t offer the Green option. Pretty good, then, that 5% and more people still say they’ll vote for us when it isn’t even offered.
The great challenge here is that it’s both logistically difficult and expensive to get our materials to polling booths around the world and even trickier to get volunteers there to hand out how to vote cards.
And that’s before you look at the Kafkaesque Electoral Commission rules, which make it even more difficult…
Getting materials out was a huge logistical effort which involved over 100kg of mail posted overseas. The how to vote cards for London were printed there, to save on freight, but everything else went from Australia. Each embassy that we could get things to got both how to vote cards and our booklet of policy snapshots.
60 volunteers (all Australians living abroad) put our materials in Embassies and Consulates in Auckland, Bangkok, Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, Colombo, Dili, Dubai, Dublin, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Honiara, Jakarta, London, New Dehli, New York, Osaka, Phnom Pehn, Port Moresby, Rome, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm, Taipei, The Hague, Tokyo, Vancouver, Vienna, Washington, and Wellington.
That is 26 countries, and 75% of Australian voters overseas!
Half of those volunteers are in London (pic below), where more than 20,000 Australians vote over the 10 days of prepolling there. Hooray for the volunteers!
I’m hoping we’ll get an update from these guys for another blog post with more photos in the coming days.
Now, London is one of the few places that we are actually able to hand out how to votes overseas, thanks to those wonderfully Kafkaesque Electoral Commission rules I mentioned.
You see, parties are only allowed to hand out how to vote cards on election day itself, except in London. And polling booths in many places overseas are closed on election day, or for most of the day, because of time zone differences. Election day may be November 24 wherever you are, but the polls have to close no later than 6pm WA time, even if that’s before November 24 actually starts in Vancouver, for instance.
You see the problem, then. We are able to get wonderful vollies on booths in NZ and East Asia, but not really anywhere else.
My understanding is that our main presence will be in London, Tokyo, Dehli (until the polls close around lunchtime), Phnom Penh and early morning in Dubai.
So, if anyone happens to be (or know) a Greens supporter who might help at a booth in Shanghai, Singapore, Bangkok, Port Moresby, Beijing or Wellington, to name a few, please get in touch with us!
In the meantime, if you’re an Aussie living overseas, and you haven’t been disenfranchised by the Howard Government’s new rules - get along and vote! Puts a new meaning on “vote early”…
Hey Greens Supporters in London.
Was wonderin if there were any plans for a drink to celebrate the end of Howard’s reign and the continued presence of the Greens as Australia’s third political force?
Well, if there are any Greens supporters in Amsterdam, we are having a little champagne breakfast on election morning to coincide with the arrival of the first results. Want to join us?
And I am afraid there is no Greens info in The Hague, ’cause the Embassy is too small to comply with AEC rules about how far materials have to be from polling places. Oh well, I tried!
Hi there Tash - there is indeedy a ‘Goodbye Party’ planned in London. It’s not solely a Greens event, but it does mean we have access to live election coverage on the big screen (Sky), and hopefully laptops set up with ABC and also specifically Green coverage too.
Email me at london@greens.org.au so I can furnish you with further details. The the same applies for any other Greens supporters in London, or willing to travel down to London.
And if you’ve not already voted, make yourself known to the vollies when you come past!
Hope to hear from you soon,
Michelle
(London rep for the Australian Greens)
Hi All,
I’m in Sri Lanka for business but doing my bit for the election! The embassy people are pretty relaxed about putting up a sign and some information. Yes it is closed on election day and only open a half day on Friday.
Cheers
jamie
Hi
I’m a Greens voter living in Edinburgh. I know the Greens cannot do anything but Edinburgh has the 2nd largest number of Australians living in Europe (after London), yet we cannot vote up here. Our only options are travel to London or postal vote. I would have thought the AEC would look at where people live and adjust their services to meet our needs.
Anyway I postal voted last week so as long as Royal Mail makes the delivery thats one more Green vote.
Hi Robert.
Although it may seem to make sense given population, the AEC can only offer voting in person at Australian Diplomatic Posts with full consular services.
Edinburgh does not have a diplomatic post, nor consular services, and thus has no possibility for elections in person.
I believe this is to do with Diplomatic posts being ‘Australian Soil’, but feel free to pursue this with the AEC further to clarify the restrictions on overseas voting locations.
Not much help I know, but hopefully this makes the reasonings a little clearer, if still not convenient.
Thanks for taking the time to do a postal vote - every bit helps!
Michelle (London rep for the Australian Greens).