Person A has invited you to like their ANUSA campaign page.
Person B has changed their profile picture on Facebook to announce them running as a General Representative under Person A’s ticket.
Person C is running as an independent and is sending out personalised policy recaps over Messenger.
Person D is Person C’s best friend and is messaging you to advocate for Person C, both on Messenger and Instagram. They’re dedicated.
Person E is you, thrust into the world of ANUSA elections, wondering what the hell a ticket is and why everyone’s profile pictures now all have the same filter. How do you even animate a profile picture?
This is my third year experiencing the circus of electing the upcoming year’s ANUSA representatives and I’m ready to delve into some of the lessons that I’ve learnt:
- If you don’t feel equipped to vote, then don’t feel pressured into it. If you’re not invested in ANUSA, then that’s okay. If you don’t even know what an ANUSA representative is, then that’s fine. I was in my second year until I registered that the people stopping me in Kambri were ANUSA candidates and not pluggers trying to sign me up to Cancer Council donations.
2. When you vote for a person, you don’t have to vote for their entire ticket. Each ANUSA representative is voted independent from their ticket. Think of a ticket as a good way to get publicity for yourself and your policy, but not like a political party.
3. You don’t have to vote for every vacancy on ANUSA. You can pick and choose which positions you want to vote a candidate into. If you just want to vote for the President position, then you can do that. You want to just vote in a General Representative because they’re your friend? You do that.
4. On that note, when you vote for a specific position, you don’t have to number your preferences for every candidate. Say there are four candidates for President, but you only want to vote for one person. You can number that person as your first preference and cast your ballot without numerating the remaining three.
5. Don’t feel the need to like every campaign page that your Facebook friends invite you to. You’re allowed to keep your feed restricted to Proud Plants Canberra and Hummus Meme pages. (Have I revealed too much about my personal interests?)
6. Voting is open for only a couple of days. This year it is open between 9am, 25th August to 12pm, the 28th of August. You can head to voteanusa.com during this time frame to cast your votes.
7. ANUSA candidates who are serious, genuinely put passion and time into their policies. If you really want to educate yourself on the best person to vote for, take the time to read individual candidate’s policies to assess whether you want them to represent you.
8. If you currently don’t have the brain capacity to read policies, you can also vote for the people with the prettiest Facebook profile picture filters and Instagram pages. Good marketing reflects their ability to advocate for students right?
Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.
We acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, who are the Traditional Custodians of the land on which Woroni, Woroni Radio and Woroni TV are created, edited, published, printed and distributed. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. We acknowledge that the name Woroni was taken from the Wadi Wadi Nation without permission, and we are striving to do better for future reconciliation.