Queensland is set to go to the polls in a couple of months for a state election, and it’s just been announced that in what looks to be an Australian first, they’ll be trialling drive-through voting stations.
The trial of election polls where you literally don’t even need to leave your car to participate in delicious compulsory democracy, will be offered at the November 25 election for those suffering from mobility limiting disabilities.
Some states in the US, including California, as well as some towns in Canada, have previously offered drive-through polling booths to those with disability or, in one case, those who are Miley Cyrus (?).
Assistant electoral commissioner Dermot Tiernan says the move is apart of other initiatives to make voting easier for those living with disabilities including e-assist kiosks with audio recordings for blind people.
Of the drive-through trial he describes the process as:
What we thought we’d do is trial a couple of drive through places where we actually come to you and we’re waiting to come to you.
You drive in, we come to you; we hand you a ballot paper [and] mark you off the roll, you put it in these portable ballot boxes and then they get added to the count.
The electorates of Oodgeroo and Noosa will be the first to trial the seriously great sounding drive-throughs, and Tiernan reckons he’s already getting boonta good feedback, which is good news for the idea to hopefully spread nation-wide:
So far we’ve done very little promotion, but there’s a lot of excitement, we’re getting a lot of calls at the call centre about it, and a lot of the elderly groups are quite interested in it.
Making a compulsory element of Australian society more accessible and inclusive? GOOD. SHIT.
