The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Meg Thornton:

Mark me down as another one who isn't going to be buying much this year. Or next year. Or probably the year after that. I figure that one of the great priveleges of having passed 30 and officially walked out of the fashion marketers target group is that I'm allowed to just wear whatever the heck I want, rather than whatever they're going to sell me. Of course, being in plus-sizes guarantees that too.

My own guess is that a lot of this is like most fashion merchandising - it's not aimed to suit most people, indeed, it's designed to suit the bare minimum of people, thus leaving the maximum number of people discontented with their "new look". Problem is, there's a limited amount of times this can be pulled on the one consumer before they make a decision along the lines of "screw you, anyway".

Me? I suit blue-based reds and greens, jewel tones (not pastels) and straight black and white. I'm not the type who can wear hipsters and get away with it (who is?), and I know that a baby-doll dress makes me look six months pregnant while dropped waists just emphasise the fact that I'm in the plus-sizes. While clothes are designed for thirteen year old flat-chested male impersonators, I'm not likely to find anything "trendy" that suits me. Fortunately, being eccentric *does* suit me.

Wishbone ends up, for my family. If we can be bothered. Not massively into wishing - more into wistful hoping.

Jeremy:

As per Epacris - it is compulsory to show up at a polling place on election day (all elections in .au tend to happen on Saturdays - I'm unaware whether this is legally mandated), to get your name marked off the electoral roll, and to receive the ballot paper. You are then pretty much entitled to do whatever you fancy to it in the polling booth (within reason... the booths are cardboard, and there's no curtains etc - I suppose this does stifle some more extreme reactions to the candidates) and then you're expected to put it into the ballot box. Ballot papers aren't supposed to leave the polling place, and they tend to be numbered (probably to catch electoral fraud) but there's no real way of linking a particular ballot paper to a particular person.

Oh, and it's good to hear that the whole process can be pretty much automated. Not sure when I got the notion of the necessity of the hand count - probably getting muddled with something else.

Generally, the process here tends to be one where electoral fraud has to be performed at the electoral boundary level - Queensland was notorious for a number of years for a large number of gerrymandered electoral boundaries to keep the ruling party in power.

Y'know, reading all this stuff about the US electoral system that I've picked up over the years from Usenet, and now from the 'blogging community, I find I'm very glad I live in Australia. Not because of the compulsory turnout, or even because of the Australian Electoral Commission, but because of our lovely system of preferential voting.

Quick explanation: On an Australian federal electoral ballot (and indeed on most state ones), you're given a list of the candidates. You're asked to number them in sequential order, using the whole numbers from 1 - n (where n=number of candidates). Then when ballots are counted (and it has to be by a human count, simply because of this) all the ones with candidate X given first preference are in pile X, all the ones with candidate Y are in another and soforth. Once all the votes have been counted, if no candidate has 50% of the vote +1 extra, the smallest pile goes on to second preferences.

For example:
After the first round of counting,
Candidate A has 30% of the vote
Candidate B has 45% of the vote
Candidate C has 10% of the vote
Candidate D has 15% of the vote

Candidate C, having the smallest number of votes, is ruled out. However, as none of the other candidates has 50% + 1 vote, his ballots aren't thrown out. Instead, they're distributed as to who the voters for Candidate C have as a second preference.

So, after the second round of counting:

Candidate A has 36% of the vote
Candidate B has 47% of the vote
Candidate D has 17% of the vote.

Candidate D is ruled out, and his votes are divided according to the next preference available for sorting - so the 2% he got from Candidate C are sorted by third preference, and the other 15% are sorted by second preference.

This is called "going to preferences". It appears to work here. Certainly despite compulsory turnout, and the necessity to do more than just punch a hole or tick a box, the level of invalid ballots tends to be rather low - down below 10% for the majority of the country. (The Australian Electoral Commission has figures to prove it)

Maybe it might be a notion for electoral reformers in the US to consider?

Just for the sake of completeness, those who are interested in other pantheons might want a few other gods to look at with regard to the whole "moving" mess.

Greek/Latin - Hermes/Mercury (god of messengers, transport, travel and commerce - if any god covers the removal companies, it would be him).

Gaulish/Celtic - Esus (identified in my notes as the Gaulish Hermes). Other useful Celtic deities to sacrifice to might be Epona (goddess of horses and other methods of transport) and the Morrigan (goddess of battle, strife and fertility).

Hope that helps.

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