Victorian State Election 2018: Some useful links and resources

We’re getting to the pointy end of the election, and if you are just joining the fun, you probably don’t have time to read every single one of my posts!

So here are some other resources that should take you less time to read, and might entertain you.

Official Resources

• VEC list of Group Voting Tickets
• VEC list of How to Vote cards
• VEC tool to find your nearest polling place – you can type in your address and it will show you a map of nearby polling places.

Other resources on small parties

• Antony Green tells you how to vote, provides some fairly scary senate calculators based on the group voting tickets and recommends voting below the line.
• Jill Stark on Twitter gives a brief rundown of political parties with misleading or confusing names
• André Brett on Twitter has a tweet for every party on the ballot.
• André also has an excellent Tumblr Blog called Blatantly Partisan Party Reviews (close inspection will reveal that he and I have something of a mutual admiration society happening – the world of tiny political party bloggers is small…), which gives you a paragraph or two on each party if you want more detail than Twitter can provide, but don’t have all day.  He also researched the independents for Brunswick.
• Matt Hrkac has nice, concise summaries of each party contesting the election.  (I’d recommend this as an article to take into the polling booth, because it’s brief and covers the basics enough to remind you who everyone is)
• Daniel Bowen has a useful article about the election, with information on voting, small parties, energy and the environment, and local Bentleigh issues.
• The New Daily have put up a post on microparties.  It’s interesting to see what stands out for them.
• If climate change is your priority, then Precarious Climate has analysed all the parties from a climate change policy perspective.
• If homelessness is your chief concern, Everybody’s Home has profiled Labor, the Coalition, the Greens and Fiona Patten’s Reason Party on this issue.
• If racism is something you are worried about, Colour Code has rated a number of major and minor parties, and provided short profiles on their policies in this area.
• First Dog on the Moon doesn’t talk about minor parties, but as usual, he is on the money with the majors.

Democracy Sausage

• Democracysausage.org is an interactive map that tells you which of your local polling booths are having sausage sizzles, which are having cake stalls, and so forth.  I have not yet figured out what all the icons mean, but they are numerous and varied.  For booths which have not yet been filled in, the site predicts the likeliness of a sausage sizzle based on past elections.  This is probably your most important link on election day…

And that’s about it!  Don’t forget to vote, and make sure your friends vote, too – and for heaven’s sake, vote below the line.  Your vote is too important to leave to other people to decide.

If you have spotted a useful round up of tiny political parties that I haven’t included here, please let me know!  I’m aware that those linked above are largely as left-leaning as I am, which is mostly because those are the blogs that link to me or that Google offers me, despite my now extremely dubious search history.  (On the bright side, Googling so many political candidates has apparently made Facebook’s and Twitter’s algorithms start sending me recruiting ads for ASIO, which I find hilarious.  I’m pretty sure ASIO would not take me as a gift.)  (But then, that’s probably what I would be saying if I *was* working for ASIO, isn’t it…?)