Vote for who you want, not just who you'll settle for

So many of my friends, who are all very intelligent people, do not understand the optional preferential voting system. I wonder if this is properly explained to kids in school, or if the major parties deliberately withhold government-sponsored education on this, to frighten people into supporting the Big Parties sponsored by Big Business? Regardless, let’s spell it out now, for never before have both major parties been so deserving of not getting a number one.

If you vote for all the alternative parties and independents first, second, third and so on, if they don’t get enough votes to win election, your vote is not wasted nor diminished. Whether your Big Party vote is for Labor or Liberal and you’ve numbered them, say, 12 or 13, then that vote will go to Labor or Liberal with as much force as it would if you have numbered them number 1.

Yes, you can vote for the little parties that really care about the environment or public transport (or whatever), and there is no danger at all that your vote is wasted. You still get to choose whether your vote is allocated, with 100% of its value, to the Poker Machine Party or the Really Big Business Party.

And one day enough of us will vote for the alternative parties, and we will have a government that actually works for the people, rather than a government beholden to the big companies that sponsored its glossy election campaign.

Vote for what you really want, not just what you may have to settle for!