alisonhtv

[alisonhtv]

2025 federal election how-to-vote cards (Part 5!)

This post is continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4, due to a limit on the amount of images you can upload in each post. This post covers Wannon and Kooyong.

Wannon

After speedrunning Stawell, I headed back to Ararat to pick up how-to-vote cards for Wannon. Unfortunately, I could only get how-to-vote candidates for four out of the nine candidates. I remember thinking the Liberal volunteers were quite grumpy, and extrapolated that they would probably lose based off that, and then Dan Tehan won lol.

Kooyong

After Ararat, I headed back into the city too late to collect any more how-to-votes, unfortunately. It was my third big day dedicated to collecting how-to-vote cards, and I didn't really have time for any more full days. But there was a bit of drama surrounding the Liberals bombarding a Kooyong polling booth with placards, so I thought I'd head down to Kooyong before the election finished. Out of the seven candidates standing, I collected how-to-votes for five of them.

I got my second Monique Ryan how-to-vote card.

Maybe the only how-to-vote card to include a candidate's BlueSky.

And, like in Chisholm, there was a local climate group -- the Kooyong Climate Change Alliance -- and Vote Climate joining forces to hand out a joint House/Senate leaflet, containing policy guidelines for the House and vague voting recommendations for the Senate.

Anyway, this concludes this collection of all the how-to-vote cards I managed to get for the 2025 Australian federal election. I have a backlog of some others which I may post at some time. For convenience, here's a link to the other four posts in this series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

[alisonhtv]

2025 federal election how-to-vote cards (Part 4!)

This post is continued from Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, due to a limit on the amount of images you can upload in each post. This post covers Lalor, Corio, Ballarat, and Mallee.

Lalor

After the day when I did Gippsland and Monash, my plan was to string together a bunch of regional seats in a very convoluted way. Firstly, I would go to Geelong, head out to Drysdale to do Corangamite, head back to the CBD to do Corio, take a bus from Geelong to Ballarat, do Ballarat, take the train to Ararat, a bus to Stawell to do Mallee, and then head back to Ararat to do Wannon.

I ended up waking up a little bit too late to execute on the Corangamite section of this plan, but I developed an alternate plan, wherein I'd take the train to Werribee, quickly run to the Lalor pre-poll, then take a bus to Wyndham Vale to take the train out to Geelong.

Out of the six candidates here, I recieved how-to-vote cards for seven of them.

Another fucking boring Family First one.

Corio

Having made the bus to Wyndham Vale and then the train to Geelong, I headed down to the pre-poll. There were a large number of hybrid Corio/Corangamite ones, so out of all the ones I could have missed, Corangamite was a pretty harmless one to have done. For Corio, though, I recieved how-to-vote cards for all six parties and candidates running, but, like Dunkley, got the wrong electorate for one of them.

Both Liberal, Greens, and Labor had joint Corangamite/Corio how-to-vote cards.

I like Socialist Alliance's colour scheme a lot. It's amusing to me that their Senate recommendations are different from Victorian Socialists, and also that the teal seams designed to conjure a socialist teal independent.

Here's a Corangamite how-to-vote card I got from the Legalise Cannabis Party.

It features a fucking awesome drawing on the inverse with Ned Kelly smoking two blunts at once. More parties should do this. The Legalise Cannabis Party should do this more often, honestly. Why did the good people of Moe not get a how-to-vote card with Ned Kelly smoking two blunts at once?

The One Nation volunteer handed me one for Corangamite, and I asked if they had one for Corio, but there was only a couple left, and so I was advised not to take one "unless I really wanted to". I didn't insist on it.

Ballarat

Here's my cheat one. So, I didn't really have enough time in Ballarat, given I had to then make a train to Ararat (which runs very infrequently) to make it to the pre-poll place, at St Patrick's Cathedral. I could have, if I'd run really fast, but I have a friend who lives in Ballarat and so he just got them for me anyway, and also gave me some leaflets from the 2023 Voice referendum, which I include here as well. He got leaflets from six out of seven candidates.

And here's the Voice referendum ones:

Mallee

I hope anyone who derides me for being lazy and not doing Ballarat myself marvels at my work in the Mallee. I had such little time in Stawell. I had to run up the road to a church -- on a road with like, three separate churches before I got to the right one, mind you, which normally would take 25 minutes back and forth in about 15. Almost breathless, I get to the booth and there's like three people there. One Nationals, one Labor, one Greens. I think the Labor volunteer was their candidate, though I actually don't remember. I take their how-to-vote cards and run back to Stawell station to take the next bus to Ararat. Unfortunately, there were only three out of eight candidates, as mentioned, but it's a miracle I made it anyway.

This post continues and concludes in Part 5.

[alisonhtv]

2025 federal election how-to-vote cards (Part 3!)

This post is continued from Part 1 and Part 2, due to a limit on the amount of images you can upload in each post. This post covers Chisholm, Gippsland, and Monash.

Chisholm

Parts 1 and 2 cover all of the how-to-vote cards from the first day, if you can believe that. I didn't go out to collect Chisholm on a dedicated day, but it happened to be on my way to somewhere during other activities. Out of the seven candidates standing here, I recieved how-to-vote cards for five of them.

At first, I recieved a hybrid how-to-vote card for both Chisholm and Kooyong for the Liberals, but then I asked for one for just Chisholm and got one.

Unlike most other Labor how-to-vote cards, Carina Garland's how-to-vote cards had multilingual instructions in Hindi, Mandarin, Greek, Vietnamese, Cantonese, and Tamil on the inverse.

Here's the second of the lobby group leaflets, issued by the Chisholm Climate Action Network and Vote Climate. Like the ASRC leaflet, it does not recommend a specific how-to-vote pattern for the House, but differs in that it includes the Senate and offers a recommendation for the Senate.

Family First had this ugly how-to-vote card.

I was, if I recall correctly, offered a Monique Ryan how-to-vote card, but after explaining that I was collecting Chisholm ones, was pointed to the Chisholm independent, Kath Davies. (I did not need three separate Monique Ryan how-to-vote cards.)

Gippsland

A couple of days later, I headed out to Traralgon to pick up how-to-vote cards for Gippsland. This was the first electorate where I recieved how-to-vote cards for all five candidates.

The 100% authentic Gippslander sticker is so silly.

The Libertarian inverse had the same policies on the inverse, but a different background image.

Monash

The real reason I wanted to go out all the way to Gippsland, though, was to pick up how-to-vote cards for Monash, which featured a deselected Liberal MP standing against his old party, as well as a separate independent who had polled well in 2022. I expected it to be a shitshow (and it did ultimately take days to settle), but ultimately Liberal Mary Aldred won without much trouble. So I headed to Moe and, like in Traralgon, I got how-to-vote cards from every single candidate.

I was interested to discover that the Legalise Cannabis how-to-vote, despite being double-sided, had no promotion for Fiona Patten, their high-profile and distinctly inner-city lead Senate candidate.

There was another different background on the inverse for the Libertarians, but given the image limit I'm not posting it.

I love the pettiness of inserting TRUE here.

I really liked the graphic design on Deb Leonard's how-to-vote card.

The same fucking Family First how-to-vote card.

And these were actually all the ones I collected from the polling booth, but as I was leaving, I noticed some volunteers setting up for the Trumpet of Patriots, and so I asked for a how-to-vote card from them.

This post continues in a series of parts. Here's links to the next ones:

Part 4

Part 5

[alisonhtv]

2025 federal election how-to-vote cards (Part 2!)

This post is continued from Part 1, due to a limit on the amount of images you can upload in each post. This post covers Dunkley, Isaacs, and Melbourne.

Isaacs

I then headed down to Mordialloc, the seat of then-Attorney General Mark Dreyfus, who may possibly resign as a result of being sacked from the ministry after the election. I technically got how-to-vote cards from all five parties running here, but one of the parties gave me one for the wrong electorate. We'll get to that later.

The Mordialloc pre-poll also doubled as a pre-poll for Dunkley, located outside the electorate, which probably explains why I got handed a One Nation how-to-vote card for Dunkley. I didn't notice until after I left the polling booth, so I couldn't ask for a different one.

Every One Nation how-to-vote card had this inverse.

Every Family First how-to-vote card had this gross layout with a bunch of different, unrelated electorates connected only by vague geographic area. Odious transphobic policies are bad enough, but at least One Nation has some sense of graphic design and theme. This just looks like shit.

Every Family First how-to-vote card had this inverse.

Dunkley

After finishing in Mordialloc, I headed down to Frankston for my last how-to-vote cards for the day. I asked for some Flinders ones, as this also doubled as a booth for Holt and Flinders, but couldn't find any. Out of the eight candidates standing here, I got how-to-vote cards for seven of them.

There was no how-to-vote card hander-outerer for One Nation at Frankston, but there was a stack of One Nation leaflets, so I ripped one off.

Same boring fucking Family First how-to-vote card.

And finally, one person was handing out how-to-vote cards for two candidates -- an independent, and one candidate standing for Fusion, specifically the Democracy First party. More information on Democracy First and the whole Fusion shemozzle can be found on this blog by axvoter.

Melbourne

Finally, I headed to the Abbotsford pre-poll to collect how-to-vote cards for Melbourne. Much like Goldstein, I thought this would be fairly uneventful (the only thing I was really looking forward to was picking up a how-to-vote card for independent Anthony Koutoufides), and was proven wrong by the eternal wisdom of the Australian electorate. I recieved how-to-vote cards for five out of seven candidates here, not including one candidate from outside the electorate.

There was a kind of self-serve thing here for independent Tim Smith, with some thin and small leaflets having an open ticket. However, there was actually someone handing out leaflets for Tim Smith, with actual recommendations. I'm not sure why there was both there, especially given the conflicting information.

This is the same Cooper/Melbourne/Wills how-to-vote card from Cooper in the last post.

And because this pre-poll also covered Kooyong, I recieved a Monique Ryan how-to-vote card. (Which will be shown in more detail later.)

Additionally, I had a bit of a conversation with the Liberal candidate, Steph Hunt, about what the hell I was up to, and she gave me a state-wide how-to-vote card, which I include here for posterity.

This post continues in a series of parts. Here's links to the next ones:

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

[alisonhtv]

2025 federal election how-to-vote cards (Part 1!)

I had an ambitious mission. To collect how-to-vote cards from every electorate in Victoria -- all 39 of them -- during the two-week early voting period. I did not succeed. Or even come particularly close. But this post does have how-to-vote cards from 15 different early voting booths, located in the following electorates:

Ballarat, Chisholm, Cooper, Corio, Dunkley, Gippsland, Goldstein, Isaacs, Kooyong, Lalor, Macnamara, Mallee, Melbourne, Monash, and Wannon. (This specific post only includes Cooper, Macnamara, and Goldstein.)

These are listed in alphabetical order, but for storytelling reasons I'm going to list them in order of how I collected them. This post also include how-to-vote cards and leaflets from a total of 25 parties, independents, and lobby groups (listed in order of main appearance):

Parties: Australian Labor Party, The Greens, Victorian Socialists, Liberal Party, Libertarian Party, Pauline Hanson's One Nation, Family First, Fusion/Democracy First, The Nationals, Legalise Cannabis Party, Trumpet of Patriots, Socialist Alliance.

Independents: Zoe Daniel, Robert Thurley, Anthony Koutoufides, Tim Smith, Kath Davies, Russell Broadbent, Deb Leonard, John de Lorenzo, Alex Dyson, Monique Ryan.

Lobby groups: Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Chisholm Climate Action/Vote Climate, Kooyong Climate Change Alliance/Vote Climate.

So, I mentioned a plan to visit polling booths in all 39 electorates. I had used a spreadsheet to plan this out, and it was doable given the free time I had. But it required meticulous planning and basically using up all of my free time from April 22 - May 2. So I didn't do that. Instead, I decided to set aside a few days to get what I considered to be the most interesting ones.

The front side of every how-to-vote card I collected is shown here, with the inverse back side shown A) if there is one and B) if it's unique. I'll include some commentary on my journey with each electorate.

Cooper

My first big collection day started in Cooper, at the Thornbury booth. Only six parties were running here, and I got how-to-vote cards here for all but two. I believe Ged Kearney herself handed me the Labor one, helpfully pointing out that it was her face on the front of it. Thanks, Ged Kearney.

The Greens had a how-to-vote card covering multiple electorates, as the booth I went to also had early voting for Wills and Melbourne voters. We will see cards like this, including this specific one, again. I tried to ask for electorate-specific ones, but occasionally they weren't available.

This is the standard inverse for almost all Greens how-to-vote cards, with a message from Steph Hodgins-May and a list of all Greens policies.

Every Liberal how-to-vote card, from what I could tell, had this on the inverse.

Macnamara

After an appointment, I headed off to St Kilda to collect Macnamara's how-to-vote cards. This was the only electorate in the country, I believe, where Labor chose to not preference the Greens, instead issuing an open ticket due to that seat's large Jewish population and the Greens' views on Israel's war in Gaza.

Like in Cooper, there were six parties running and I got how-to-vote cards from four of them.

There's a slightly modified inverse here, with Sonya Semmens' signature and a different header. The message seems very similar textually to Hodgins-May's.

Goldstein

I then headed off to Hampton to collect Goldstein's how-to-vote cards. I don't believe I thought this electorate was terribly interesting, having written only "Tim fucking Wilson" in my notes as a reason to visit it. Shows how much I know, as independent MP Zoe Daniel ended up losing her seat, with the aforementioned Tim fucking Wilson being the only Liberal candidate to flip a seat for the party. I recieved how-to-vote cards from five out of seven candidates here.

The first how-to-vote card was one of the few not from any specific political party, but instead from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, providing no specific ballot recommendations but instead showing the positions of major candidates on various issues relating to refugees.

Zoe Daniel, like a number of independents we will see in this post, issued an open how-to-vote card.

This generic Labor inverse is the one on all the Labor how-to-votes from here on out that don't have a specified inverse. This appears in both a mixture of seats where Labor runs dead (like Goldstein) or some very safe Labor seats.

This post continues in a series of parts. Here's links to all of them:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5