I'd forgotten how backward and unhelpful the WA Electoral Commission were at election time. Over my almost 30 years of involvement at polling booths on election day, attempts to recycle How To Vote (HTV) cards have become increasingly frustrated by the silly decisions of the Electoral Commission.
On Saturday October 18, I was reminded of the Commission's silliness when I attempted to recycle HTV cards at the Vasse Primary School polling place. As electors left the school assembly area where they were crossed off the electors' list, handed a ballot paper, directed to a booth to mark the paper and then directed to the ballot box, next to the only exit was box for rubbish such as HTV cards. When I asked Lorraine, the person in charge of the polling booth, if I could recover HTV cards from the rubbish box so that I could recycle them on behalf of all the parties who had volunteers handing out HTV cards, I was told that she could not allow me to do so. When I politely but resolutely protested and asked the basis for this ruling, she directed me to her boss Phil who I phoned with the same request. In turn, Phil advised he'd talk to the WAEC's by-election manager and get back to me.
A few minutes later, Phil phoned me back and confirmed that permission to empty the rubbish box would not be given. When I asked him to explain why, he declined to elucidate the WAEC's concerns, other than saying there could be a ballot paper accidentally discarded in the box. When I pointed out that Lorraine has said such ballot papers would not be allowed to be placed in the ballor box, he ceased attempting to explain the decision, instead reiterating the Commission's refusal to allow access to the rubbish box.
So why is the WAEC opposed to anyone - their staff or political party volunteers - recycling HTV cards? As strange as it may seem, they appear to believe it's a occupational health and safety issue. If you think back 15 or so years when heroin was one of the most popular recreational drugs, the WAEC warned that drug users might inject themselves in the privacy of a booth, even though these booths then as now were open and barely concealed a ballot paper, let alone any drug-taking paraphernalia. So, after injecting themselves with heroin, drug users were expected to dispose of the used needles in the rubbish boxes near the polling booth exits.
How many times were heroin users found shooting up in polling booths? None. How many discarded needles were found in rubbish boxes mixed in with HTV cards? None.
But the OHS concerns don't stop there. People coming into the polling booth could bring glass drinking containers in with them, drop them on the floor and the broken glass would have to be cleaned up and disposed of in the rubbish boxes. Of course this could happen, expect that you can't buy non-alcoholic drinks in glass bottles any more.
OK, what if people used the rubbish boxes to dispose of soiled nappies or food scraps? For recent elections, pre-polling has allowed people with reasonable reasons for not being able to vote on polling day to cast a pre-poll vote. Invariably, almost all nursing mothers will find a suitable time to pre-poll rather than run the risk of standing in long queues on polling day with babies in nappies, often under a hot burning sun during a summer election.
Please, WAEC, come clean (excuse the pun!) on why you won't allow polling booth volunteers to empty the rubbish boxes at polling booths so that HTV cards can be recycled. If someone puts a HTV card in the ballot box and throws their ballot paper in the rubbish box , that's not an action that WAEC staff should be held responsible for. If volunteers are happy to run the risk of being cut or injected by a sharp piece of rubbish or putting their hand into a soiled nappy, that's their problem, not yours.
Is it worthwhile trying to recycle HTV cards? Let's do the numbers (but round them off for simpilicity's sake). In a normal state election, there are probably 1.5 million electors. If the four major parties -Liberal, Labor, Nationals, Greens - print enough HTV cards so that, in a worse case scenario, every elector going into a polling booth has a HTV card, then that's six million pieces of paper printed and distributed during the election campaign. Add in an extra million or two to take account of the minor parties' HTV cards and the total could easily hit seven million HTV cards. Forgetting about the number of trees that have to be cut down to meet this need for paper, the cost of printing out seven million, one sided colour A4 pages is probably three cents per page. Total cost - $210,000. If the political parties could reduce their HTV card print run by 50%, in the knowledge that they can recycle HTV cards from the polling booth's rubbish box, that's a worthwhile financial saving for the political parties and their candidates and, thanks to taxpayer funding of election campaigns, the savings could be passed on to taxpayers through reduce public funding.
The WAEC needs to explain why it maintains this absurd ban on the recycling of HTV cards. The risks it perceives to volunteers involved in recyling are non-existent and the financial and environmental benefits are worthwhile.
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