My experience handing out PPAU How to vote cards

General
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My experiences were similar in my electorate. We had both polling booths covered in Cooma. Traffic peaked at about 10am and at 1pm with things slowing I’d thought I’d drive to jindy to catch the ski crowd coming back (after all that’s where I would have been if not electioneering). In hindsight jindy was a missed opportunity, pre-polling, locals and out of towners, ski season and NSW school holidays. The local greens volunteers were also facing questions from voters about their htv with pirates #2 in Cooma and Jindy that they needed help with.

I did think the 'aargh mateys would get old quick but honestly they didn’t and more often than not resulted in a conversation. I cringe on the name change issue, you almost never do this in marketing. There are successful brands that have outgrown silly sounding names (e.g. Virgin), and we need to be building our brand to take ownership of the name. Brand recognition won’t come with a name change. We have some good policies and I was amazed at how they were received on the weekend, but they won’t create brand on their own either.

I think it’s worth puttiing some thought into developing a 3y strategic plan, e.g. marketing and media, key messaging, voter profiles and segments etc

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I forgot to mention that “ARRRRRGH” did not work a single time for me

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I can imagine that would be the case

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I never aaaaarrghed first. We should have this in the code :slight_smile:

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I used it if I was having trouble getting attention. Not as a standard greeting. Only two people said that they actually like seafaring pirates so it could have worked on them but they like pirates regardless. A lot of questions about Johnny Depp… Ugh

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I handed out HTVs at a Wollongong booth that ended up with a 65% 2pp Labor vote. The first thing I noticed was that all the volunteers were super friendly to each other. They were pretty interested in PP so it only took 10mins to break the ice and get into the swing of delivering quick broad summaries of our platform.

In NSW we were #2 on the Greens HTVs, which got us a lot of attention. The Greens volunteers were very friendly and spent a lot of time explaining to greens voters that we have good policies and are worth preferencing. They also directed people to me or to the HTVs that I left at the second gate.

The teenage Liberal volunteers shared cakes around which was nice, but then they spent the rest of the day trying to provoke the Labor guy with soundbites I’m sure they didn’t understand, calling Turnbull a socialist, and talking up the “growing libertarian wing of the LNP”. Scary stuff.

Labour volunteers were quiet and didn’t say anything other than “Labor” and “Sharon Bird”. I wish they tried it in Matt Damon’s voice from Team America. The Science and Flux guys were good to chat to but everyone who took a Pirate HTV took theirs as well, so I moved to the slower second entrance to try monopolise the voters there.

I was shocked at how many people happily took a HTV from every party. The next most common voter types I noticed were rude Labor thugs who yelled that they didn’t want my crap, flustered Liberals who couldn’t find the Liberal volunteers (they were keeping out of sight because nobody likes Liberals here), and self-righteous greens who gave me dirty looks that I would love to have watched slip from their faces when they saw the Greens recommended #2.

There were also friendly people; Pirate Party fans, techies, TPP opponents, copyright reformists, greens who thought about preferences in advance, and people who appreciated the exposure to new ideas.

The things I said all day were:
• Pirates in the Senate!
• …for government transparency, personal privacy, copyright reform, and human rights.
• Would you like to know more about the Pirate Party?
• Various super friendly greetings.
• Column ARRGH! (in response to pirate jokes)

About 20 people actually asked me questions and about the same number came back to tell me they voted for us. In the end our primary vote for the division fell from 408 in 2013 to 257 this time. Interestingly Science Party increased their vote from 80 to 545 with a HoR candidate, new name, grouping with Cyclists, lab coats and the pitches ‘vote for science’ and ‘evidence based policy’.

When the second gate got locked the volunteers there came back and told me my unattended HTVs and corflutes were a success. I went to retrieve them but they’d already been stolen, cut cable ties still wrapped through the fence. I went to pick up others on the way home and two more were gone. Either our signs are highly collectable and we’re sitting on a lucrative fundraising opportunity, or that’s just Wollongong.

It was good fun anyway and I’ll definitely do it again.

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Wow thanks for the write up, it sounds like Wollongong are full of progressive/left thinking people and loves Pirate Party, even our sign was pirated. How many 1st prefs at your particular polling place? Really awesome how the Greens at your polling place took it upon themselves to put in a Good word for their #2 for their loyal voters to listen to their preferences. That is sure to make a huge difference

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I wouldn’t say it’s “full of” progressives - those conversations were just the highlights for me. The CDP vote was pretty high and most people just don’t care because our Labor MP only changes when they retire.

I was at Smiths Hill. @Feenicks smoked me at Corrimal. Not sure if anybody was at any of the other Cunningham booths but these are the first preference numbers:

Corrimal East,25. Smith’s Hill,15. Towradgi,12. Mount Saint Thomas,11. Fairy Meadow,11. Bulli Central,10. Unanderra South,8. Helensburgh,8. Mount Keira,7. Wollongong,7. Thirroul,7. Thirroul East,7. Woonona,7. Gwynneville,6. Lake Heights,6. Lindsay Park,6 Port Kembla,6. Warrawong Central,6. Balgownie Central,6. Corrimal,6. Tarrawanna,6. Balgownie,6. Figtree,5. Keiraville,5. Wollongong Central,5. Russell Vale,5. Unanderr,5. Figtree Heights,4. Mount Kembla,4. Wollongong North,4. Coledale,4. Mount Ousley,4. Coniston,3. Helensburgh North,3. Bulli,3. Woonona East,3. Cordeaux Heights,3. Port Kembla Central,2. Stanwell Park,2. Woonona Central,2. Warrawong,1. Bellambi,1. Wombarra,0. Austinmer,0.

Everybody at work said they put us in their top 6. Probably below Labor. I’ll have to teach them how to vote.

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This.

Many friends did this. “We voted for you, we put you at 3!”

“That isn’t voting for us.”

“Why?”

“Voting for someone is putting them at 1. You need 4% of 1 votes to get funding.”

These are people who have a keen interest in politics, but who imagine a voting system and vote according how the system works in their minds, not how it actually works.

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There are two common errors:

  • preference ‘deals’
  • thinking it’s a points system
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I wasn’t able to hand out HTVs this year (as I’m currently on the board of the APF, and am required to be non-partisan during the campaign as part of that), but I thought I might share some of my experiences from handing out HTVs in the Griffith by-election back in 2014. It’s been a while, so there’s a lot I’ve probably forgotten, but anyway…

The booth I was at (Whites Hill) was a solidly Liberal favouring booth, which put it at odds with most of the rest of the electorate. We didn’t have enough Pirate Party shirts for everyone back then, so rather than wear the flag I just went in a white business shirt and black chinos. Considering my booth ended up with the 2nd highest Pirate vote on the day (about 2.42% of votes cast at the booth were for us), it worked out pretty well for me. I got the feeling that simply by presenting myself in a professional way, certain types of people were a little more willing to listen to what I had to say. In particular, I think I managed to connect to the more socially progressive Liberal voters who would probably have been a more natural Greens voter if only they could get past their preconceptions and biases about the party and its members. I projected an image more in line with how they saw themselves.

There was only one entrance to the booth, so every single voter had to run a gauntlet, with volunteers from all parties clustered close by the gate. I arrived quite early, well before most volunteers, but the Liberals seemed to have set up their equipment the night before and secured the best spots (i.e. anything with a bit of shade from the QLD sun). There was no room to put signs up on the fences or anything. Thankfully though, there was plenty of space right next to the footpath, and I was able to find a space where the majority of people walking up would see them, as well as anyone driving by.

There was never a significant queue at the booth, but there was quite a good flow-through during the peak periods, and I actually found it quite easy to get people to take HTVs. I didn’t typically greet individual voters (probably a good thing, since some voters heckled volunteers for saying it was a “good” morning, with them being forced to vote again), and mostly stuck to a few soundbites that I thought would get peoples attention. With people who looked like Liberal voters, I typically used lines about “free speech” or “your right to privacy”. On the odd occasions when there were more Labor voters around, more general quips about “your rights online”. For anyone taking a Greens HTV, I pulled out “Vote for the boat people, vote Pirate”, which seemed to get a good reaction from a lot of people. I also preempted joked about the name with “Pirate Party: Strange name, serious policies”, which actually prompted a few people to take HTVs just to read them. Puns like how the Pirates would “Cutlass” than the major parties also went down well.

Most people hadn’t heard about us before the election at all, though I think more were aware of us in that particular electorate than would have been typical elsewhere, possibly just because of more focused campaigning with Mel having gone out meet and greet locals. I didn’t get a lot of questions about the policies from voters, but I did actually get a few from volunteers for other parties. The Greens volunteers in particular were quite willing to talk, and let me borrow a spot under their umbrella as the day dragged on and we all got more sunburnt (me showing them our HTVs swapping 2’s certainly helped). Labor were also fairly friendly, with one confessing that her teenage son was planning to vote for us that day. The Liberals though…they were a bit obnoxious, frankly. There was one memorable occasion where one of their volunteers took our HTV then (without reading it) started trying to talk over me and ridicule our policies (basically exaggerating them, like claiming we wanted to eliminate copyright outright). I shut him up pretty quick by pointing out his bull, slammed him with better knowledge of the policies of his own party, and got rewarded by a number of voters who were passing by pointedly moving away from him and taking our HTV.

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Something else I noticed was that the print quality of our HTVs was much higher than everybody else’s. Like blew them out of the water and was possibly overkill.

The full gloss A4 might have gotten more attention than some shoddy A6 ones but even the majors only used photocopy standard.

Not sure what the price difference was but it might be worth at least prototyping and comparing cheaper options next time.

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A lot of what’s written in this thread echoes my experience in handing our HTV’s for GetUp! in the last federal election. There was a great deal of camaraderie between those handing out HTV’s, especially those not in the big two parties.

If you’re interested in more reports from those handing out HTV’s Stephen Mayne, who garnered a little over 7% as an independent in Manningham, has put a couple of summaries up at Volunteer accounts of election day in Menzies. His campaign struck an iceberg on election day from complaints that his HTV’s weren’t authorised on both sides - the volunteer accounts report on some of the hacks that they attempted to be compliant, on a campaign that was run on the smell of an oily rag, as well as the inconsistency of how the issue was dealt with by the AEC at the various booths.