How I'm voting (election resources)

(Note: This post suggests a decion-making-process, not a particular decision.)

For my lower house vote I’m going to Below the Line to check out my candidates and draw up a list. There are few enough candidates that I can just remember what order to put them in.

For my upper house vote I’m putting a bit more effort in. I’m using Senate IO instead of Below the Line here. Senate IO  also lets your start from a party’s registered preferences list, but it also lets you start with a blank ballot and add parties one at a time. I prefer that, since it’s easier to see which parties you still need to make decisions about, and easier to compare them to existing choices. So you can, e.g.:

Start with a blank ballot, then add the parties you’re most familiar with:

Major Party 1
Major Party 2
Major Party 3

From there, I’m looking at each party in turn, and looking up their positions on Butterfly’s Wings’ incredibly useful 2013 Election Summary Guide, supplemented by Lindy Penguin’s Minor Parties Vote Compass mapping. If you don’t know where you stand, perhaps try the ABC’s Vote Compass, too? It’s not on a blog named after an animal, but don’t let that scare you. Finally, SBS has an overview of the three major parties’ policies with links to more detail.

I’ll take a particular party and ask myself, “Would I prefer these guys in the Senate to <Party already considered>?”  If yes, they go above; if no, below. If you don’t want put a lot of effort in, you could simply decide whether each minor party is better or worse than the major parties. So you might end up with broad categories:

Awesome Minor Parties
Major Party 1
Good Minor Parties
Major Party 2
Maybe OK Minor Parties
Major Party 3
Shitty Minor Parties
Crazies

If you’ve got more time, you can sort within those categories. For example, my Senate list has ended up like this:

Major Party – good policies, known quantity
Minor Parties – good policies, unknown quantity
Major Party – ok policies, known quantity
Single Issue Parties – with issues I support
Minor Parties and Single Issue Parties – that are fine, whatever, I don’t care
Major Party – bad policies, known quantity
Single Issue Parties – with issues I reject
Minor Parties – bad policies, unknown quantity
Loonies – quite a few of these.

 Save as PDF, print, done!