Six-leaf Clover and the lads who had no clue about local democracy

I love voting so much I (nearly) always do it on the actual day, just for the vibe of the thing. The crowds. The how-to-vote hander-outerers. The friendly chitchat in the queue, mercifully brief.

This time was different. What should have been a 15-minute excursion into democracy brought me face-to-face with folks who don’t love or get the vibe of the thing. And who find it all a major inconvenience, even though it happens less frequently than once in a blue moon. Much love to educators like Heather Sharp, associate professor and researcher in democracy at the University of Newcastle, who attempt to get the voting message across. More of her later.

Clover Moore celebrates her victory on Saturday night.Credit: Janie Barrett

I personally didn’t mind the 45-minute queue to cast my vote on Saturday in the council elections. (There were plenty of NSW Electoral Commission workers, says Andrea Summerell, the commission’s executive director, elections, but too many of us changed our minds about where we wanted to vote.)

For someone like me, a City of Sydney voter, the queuing is a perfect opportunity for a good sticky-beak. Staring at strangers, neighbours, friends. Time to ask a few nosy questions. Time to eavesdrop wildly. I enjoyed Randall, a local consulting engineer, using his time to meditate on the process and, as he left, explaining how long it would take us all to get through: “It’s five minutes for every nine people.” Always trust a consulting engineer to figure stuff out.

And so it was that the people behind me in the queue were half a dozen lads who looked like they’d escaped from St John’s College or similar. They were not happy about the wait. Not happy they couldn’t do anything about it.

It’s just after 11am on Saturday and the weekend stretches out before them. Their idea of fun is evidently not standing in a line to exercise their democratic right to vote. One of the young blokes, not wanting to be in a queue, rings his dad. Loudly. “Dad!” he says. “Dad, can you vote for me?”

He was not joking. And he was not impressed with the loud reply on the other end. Love you, Dad. (Apologies to the Cadbury commercial.)

Turns out that none of them was eligible to vote at this booth. What ensued was one of the polling place managers having to take them through the rules of the game, including – surprisingly to me and to them – that you can’t lodge absentee votes on election day for local councils. Oi, state government, that should change. A special shoutout to Ashley, one of the polling place managers who the Electoral Commission calls “one day wonders”. They work for hours to deal with the weary, the weird and the whining.

Now I said I didn’t mind the wait. But kids were going wild, the elderly and/or infirm were exhausted and patience was being tested. Fortunately, Ashley and her colleagues were trying to get those who needed support to the front of the queue, thereby annoying others. Those jealous whingers can get in the bin, as the young ones like to say.

Speaking of the bin. There was one moment when I knew Clover Moore would be elected for a sixth term as mayor. There was a bloke ahead of me, well-dressed and indignant. There was no one handing out how-to-vote cards for the Lord Mayor so Well-Dressed Guy set about scrabbling in the rubbish bins where all how-to-vote cards go to die. Where I vote, by the way, there was no sign of displeasure over six-leaf Clover. There were also no Clover volunteers and no Labor volunteers. Greens in spades. And libertarians and independents, who had the money to pay their people (which will need to be a disclosed election expense).

Anyway, the St John’s College crew (apologies if it was Paul’s or similar) were clearly irritated at this imposition on their free time. And I’m just wondering how a bunch of young adults can be so ignorant about their rights and responsibilities – and so ungrateful to those trying to help. (A shoutout, however, to the lad in this crew who recognised that Smiths Lake, where he was enrolled to vote, was too far to travel on the day. Had it not occurred to him to update his enrolment?)

The University of Newcastle’s Heather Sharp tells me that school students get to practise voting in year 6. And she’s quite right: it is hard for that vital understanding to be carried from year 6 into the future. Sharp is looking forward to the revamp of the years 7-10 history syllabus, which will mandate the study of civics and the foundations of democracy. She’s also impressed with what teachers manage to squeeze into an already compressed curriculum.

And she’d like to remind the bloke who called his dad and the rest of the whingers that Australia is really a pretty good country. “There are few countries which not only have universal suffrage [but] make it compulsory to vote,” Sharp says. That, she says, is how we avoid extremists.

Now we just have to fix our public education campaigns (hey schools, the NSW Electoral Commission is ready to help), get people to volunteer more and remind voters that their local council might be about roads, rates and rubbish, but it’s also about participating in democracy from the ground up – even if that means scrabbling in bins.