Well, our chance at voting has once again come and gone. Last Saturday was the State election here in western Australia. And an interesting result, I must say.

My part in all this, apart form my obligation to vote, was to manage one of the many polling places established for the election. Leonie was the Returning Officer for the State District of Kalgoorlie - somewhat smaller than her Federal responsibilities.

I have worked on elections for the last 20 years - long before I met Leonie (but thats another story I may tell sometime) - so my experience was put to good use as Manager of the new and relatively smallish polling place at the new O'Connor Primary School.

My job started one the Friday evening when I set up the voting screens - hopefully to make the flow of voters easier - not many people particularly like to *have* to vote - you don't want to frustrate them any more.

Early saturday morning I was back to greet my staff and get ready for opening at 8am.

The day went well - only a few minor problems. Like having to keep party workers handing out "how-to-vote" cards away from the entrance - if you don't they will follow voters right up and cause a nusiance! And then there was one unfortuneate voter from down south who didn't realise she had been given two ballot papers - one for the Legislative Assembly, and one for the Legistative Council - and left one of them in the voting screen. I found it later and declared it an discarded ballot paper. She came back later claiming she hadn't been given both papers and wanted another go! I politely refused, because I knew what had happened - she vote had already been put in the ballot box, and the discarded paper recorded as such.

My most important roll is in the evening after the polling closes at 6pm. I have to make sure the count is conducted efficiently, and that results are phoned through to Leonie as the District Returning Officer. I also had to reconcile the issue of ballot papers - to make sure the ballot was valid and all ballot papers were accounted for.

The local paper was on hand to take my picture emptying the ballot box onto the tabel so my staff could sort and count the votes.

In the papers again - tipping out ballot papers to be counted

I finally had everything packed up and was out by about 8:30pm - not bad for a long days work. We counted 674 of the ballots for the District (about 12,000 voters on the Roll).

The overall result of the election was kind of surprising - not the fact that the Labor Party won - but more the scale of the win. By about 10pm is was obvious the ALP had won - but many of the former Ministers had lost seats too. I guess as the former Premier said, "A government that doesn't listen to the people deserves to be thrown out". And thats exactly what happened.

The politics of this election were quite simple - voter discontent with the performance of the conservative government. When they build monuments to themselves (ie the new Bell Tower in Perth) instead of fixing the basics such as health, education and security... well the inevitable happens.

Another factor was the poor performance, even arrogance, of some of the Court ministry.

And then there was the "Hanson factor" - the 10% vote for Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party. Although I strongly disagree with the whole concept of One Nation - it has all the hall marks of a cult, very little credible substance to any policies, but espouses the "right words" (in more ways than one) that people want to hear, I still think its a good thing for Australan politics. I wouldn't want to see them do too well, mind you, but they do serve a purpose.

On a local level, I was a bit disappointed that the only loss that Labor suffered was our own Megan Anwyl. The Liberal candidate ran a "better" campaign - much more "in-your-face" type stuff, and along with fears for the mining industry and Native Title, as well as the prospect of a Labor government removing the electoral gerrymander that gives country voters twice the voting power of our city cousins, I think it was always going to be an uphill battle for Megan. Still, as of today, there is only a few votes in it (about 200 different on the two-candidate prefered count. (For a more complete story on how our voting system works, I will soon provide a little example).

I felt sorry for Megan, being the only Labor casualty. But then thats democracy. You win some, you loose some. In the end the people of Western Australia (now thar Richard Court is no longer Premier, we don't have to put up with "Wessssstern Australia"! - *grin*) have had their say - which is more that happens in some parts of this world. Democracy has won!

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