[LINK] postal vote oddity

[Chris Maltby]

> On 19/10/07 10:42 AM, "Karl Auer" <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:
> > So my question: What do the parties get out of this? Sending the
> > application is an excuse for more junk mail, it gets their message into
> > the household. But what do they get out of forwarding postal vote
> > applications?

On Fri, Oct 19, 2007 at 11:19:09AM +1000, Stilgherrian wrote:
> They have the home addresses of people who won't be at home on polling day,
> so they can send the lads around to steal your furniture? :)

Actually, they also know the day that the AEC will post out the ballot
papers to voters, so on the day before they will post a how-to-vote
leaflet to the people whose applications they processed. It'll probably
be the only how-to-vote card the voter gets.

As someone who has watched the opening of postal votes it's really easy
to see which ones came via party organised applications. They tend to
carefully follow one or other party ticket. Sometimes they even mail in
the how-to-vote card (different from the election day one) instead of
the ballot paper. The people who apply direct to the AEC (and aren't on
the registered postal vote roll) have much less party discipline. You
can tell that they have received no how-to-vote information when voting.

To send personal letters to each enrolled voter costs above $30,000 in
postage alone, plus the cost of the material. As an educated guess, the
cost of the mailout would be above $60,000. Then you've got to employ
people to handle the return emails, and then you may have to spend
another few thousand on mailing out how-to-votes. That's a lot of money
to spend on swinging a few hundred (at most) votes. But maybe enough to
win a marginal seat.

The Australian crest on the postal vote application in Eden Monaro (and
in Wentworth where I live) tells you this cost was met by the taxpayer.
Thanks very much for nothing Mssrs Nairn and Turnbull. Labor, without
this generous support sent one item per household, a saving of maybe
30% on the mailout cost.

A party without incumbent MPs and the millions of dollars to run a
postal vote campaign across every winnable seat in Australia is severely
disadvantaged by the postal voting system - leaving aside the flagrant
deception on the Liberal party postal vote stuff.

Chris