#htvs

This week, the Fusion Party—whom I reviewed at considerable length and not because I think they are a good option—posted how-to-vote cards (HTVs). Today, they retracted some of them and deleted posts from social media platforms. So, it's going well!

It seems there was very little vetting, with candidates not just free to allocate their own preferences but also with no review or questions asked before the HTVs were posted publicly. It speaks poorly of party processes that evidently nobody said "uhh hey what's going on here?"

Luckily, I saved a couple of the worst HTVs for individual seats, and the Victorian Senate HTV is still up. Shall we have a look? Let's begin with that Senate HTV:

I will get the obvious dunk out of the way: this is an atrocious design, busy and unpleasant on the eye. The emojis are completely unserious. But, look, HTVs are rarely artistic masterpieces. They should communicate a party's agenda concisely—which this one does not do, there's way too much text—and set out some preference recommendations to aid their supporters.

And hoo boy look at those Fusion preferences: Libertarians in 5th above Labor in 9th and the Greens in 10th. The Libertarians are one of Australia's most loathsome minor parties and they stand against what Fusion claims to be their core values, such as a denial of the reality of climate change that is at odds with the "Planet Rescue" part of Fusion's current registered name. How would you feel if you were a member of Fusion constituent party Vote Planet? I'd assume not great, although I also understand Kammy Cordner Hunt, the Victorian lead Senate candidate above, is from that wing. A penny for her thoughts!

Fusion have been taking some serious flak for this on social media. If you have a Facebook account, here is the announcement of the Senate HTV, with reactions and defensive replies by the official Fusion account and some candidates. People are not happy about that Libertarian preference, and the second candidate on the Vic ticket, Simon Gnieslaw, has been responding at length (hi Simon, I'm sure you're reading; yes I remember you getting upset in my DMs in 2022 because I called your centrism "waffle" and your website "amateurish"). I've screenshotted three choice replies below.

This is quite silly rhetoric and it seems that some Fusion organisers have been taken in by smooth talk from one of Australia's most distasteful parties. The Libertarians' lead candidate in Victoria is a literal con artist and the party are bad-faith actors. It is little wonder that in private they can make soothing noises of "good will" and massage the ego of Fusion delegates in preference discussions. Gnieslaw's comments (particularly that third screenshot) also evince a naive belief in "compromise" above everything else. Forever seeking compromise rather than sticking to principles is just a way to allow bad-faith actors to drag the Overton window towards themselves. This is delusional stuff.

As for the Greens, they have little incentive to deal with electoral lightweights such as Fusion. The Greens' preferences are certain to be distributed after Fusion is already out of the count, if distributed at all. Unlike the Libertarians, who as a fellow micro-party need all the favourable HTV treatment they can get and will say whatever it takes to get a good placement in the hope it pays off in the contest for the last Senate quota, Fusion are the ones who need to get the Greens to want to work with them, not the other way around. It seems Fusion can't play with the big kids who have built a seat-winning constituency in every state—possibly because Gnieslaw has a personal grievance against them over the Israel–Palestine conflict, as articulated on his candidate page. The HTV above claims Fusion is "the only party with a Tangible Peace Plan for the war in Israel and Palestine" (oh yeah sure you've solved a century-long conflict) and even more ridiculously suggests that Fusion is "already working in the background to deliver this plan" (solving the problems of the world over beers at the pub is not "working in the background"). You can read this Tangible Peace Plan for yourself; perhaps you'll agree with me that would be better summarised as intangible principles.

One more comment on the Senate HTV before I move on to some of the House HTVs: if you looked closely, you would have noticed that among the unnecessary emojis are three other symbols. One, a circle with 3 Rs, indicates support for the Climate Rescue Accord, which Fusion developed through negotiations with the Animal Justice Party, Australian Progressives (contesting this election as part of Fusion), and Reason (now de-registered, with Fiona Patten standing for Legalise Cannabis). It has reasonable enough objectives mixed with the sort of futurism about R&D into technologies that some would dub optimistic and others fanciful. The second is a Khamsa symbol, which indicates parties who have given in-principle support for Fusion's "Tangible Peace Plan". And the third is a symbol indicating support for a Universal Basic Income.

The thing about these symbols is that they mean nothing to the average voter, and although they are explained on the Senate HTV, Fusion has used them on HTVs for seats in the House of Representatives with no explanation. They're simply mysterious icons beside their name and that of some other parties. If you are even mildly inclined to conspiratorial thinking, you might wonder what they are meant to communicate and to whom.

So, let's turn to HTVs for specific seats. Remember, Fusion has recently incorporated the Australian Progressives (who, despite their name, now claim to be in the "sensible centre") and Democracy First (a fringe right-wing org of serial candidate Vern Hughes). It seems candidates had freedom to distribute their preferences however they wanted, and some went... off message.

First, the Fusion candidate in Melbourne, Helen Huang:

Yes, she is sending her second preference to independent Tim Smith and her third to the Liberals. Smith is not the disgraced ex-Victorian Liberal politician of that name, but a contestant from Married at First Sight who says that "I don’t like politicians" and promotes the "strategic" use of social media outlets like Instagram and Tik Tok to gauge public opinion instead of holding referendums (wait until this guy finds out about constitutional law!). As for why on earth the Liberals are third, above Labor or the Greens, the HTV itself says this is because of Steph Hunt's "credentials in peacebuilding to end wars and bring people together". Yes, Liberal credentials in peacebuilding. Ponder that one!

But the real humdinger is the HTV for McEwen candidate Erin McGrath. See if you can spot the issue among the preferences:

That's right: Family First is preferenced fourth, above any of the major parties. Yes, the Family First, the party of vile anti-LGBTIQ campaigner and professional eater-of-shit Lyle Shelton. They could scarcely be more at odds with core Fusion values.

But it gets better because people pressed Fusion about this on Twitter and they simply couldn't pick a lane. The original post has now been deleted—it just had some HTVs including McGrath's for McEwen—but if you have a log-in you can view a surviving comment chain here. One reply flagged some of the bizarre decisions, and the official account began by saying that they were made based on personal interactions:

So, at first, Fusion are fine with preferencing "one guy" from Family First for being "vaguely reasonable". Then, as the negative response grew, they deleted and offered this explanation:

Yup, apparently this was simply a production mistake. If that is true, it speaks very poorly for the party's internal oversight, because multiple people clearly did not think to say anything when making, approving, or posting the HTV. And when pressed on this, Fusion replied with an absolute gem:

Things had changed?? It's Family First. WHAT CHANGED.

The party says it is a mistake, but these contortions are worthy of professional gymnasts. It seems the reality is more straightforward. The party's own list of candidates includes a small logo showing which constituent of Fusion the candidate is aligned with. Some, such as Huang in Melbourne, appear to be unaligned, but Erin McGrath in McEwen is aligned with—you guessed it!—Democracy First. She's part of Vern's right-wing rabble. I am far more prepared to believe she genuinely sympathises with the Family First candidate than that "things had changed". The only thing that changed is people noticed this laughable preference at odds with Fusion's own stated values.

First, my apologies for not answering this sooner—I meant to check, then got caught up on completing the reviews and had not looked up options until yesterday afternoon when completing my index of reviews.

I am happy to say that Cluey Voter now includes the 2025 federal election and it is the only ballot creator that I have found for this election that enables you to create a personal how-to-vote card for a below-the-line vote.

Even if you are voting above the line, though, there are a lot of parties and planning your vote ahead of time will save you hassle at the polling place. Sure, you could just make a list from most to least preferred in your word processor or notes app of choice, but having the candidates numbered in ballot order makes voting a lot quicker when you get to the booth and are trying to wrangle the big Senate ballot. You can copy column by column, left to right, rather than searching back and forth for each party or person.

So, here is a quick overview of options for anyone voting tomorrow who wants something in ballot order that they can have on their phone or print and take with them into the booth to transcribe onto the ballot. You must transcribe it onto the official ballot—you can't just stick the printout in the ballot box!

Personal how-to-vote card creators if you are voting above the line in the Senate

Donkey Votie and Build a Ballot both enable you to create a personal how-to-vote card if you are voting above the line. Donkey Votie is simpler, so it is the one I recommend; plus you can enjoy their humorous brief summaries of each party. Build a Ballot also enables you to make a personal how-to-vote card for your lower house electorate—but you have to go through a somewhat tedious quiz first (which to me seems to have been designed to suggest to soft Labor voters that the Greens align more with their views).

Personal how-to-vote card creator if you are voting below the line in the Senate

As noted above, Cluey Voter is the only one I've found. Us BTL voters are more poorly served this election than any I've voted in before when it comes to custom vote creators. I honestly find Cluey Voter a bit cumbersome: you rank parties by 5 general levels of support, then it generates a card and you can manually edit the numbers. This is fiddly, especially if you change your mind on even one candidate's position mid-ranking, but there is at least a feature to check if you have made any mistakes in the count.

If you have a complex vote like I do (reordering candidates within and across numerous tickets), here's my strategy to save time with Cluey Voter. First, list the parties/candidates from most to least preferred in your word processor or notes app of choice. Then go to Cluey Voter, select your state, ignore step 1 entirely, and click "go to step 2: rank candidates". Now, click "minimise preferences", which reduces what's there to just 12 digits. Delete all those. Now, use your ranked list to find each party/candidate, start numbering from 1, and get them into ballot order. Make sure you click "check" to see if there are any errors in your numbering. This is basically what you'd be doing if you took your notes app list into the ballot booth, but you can do it in the privacy of your own home before you go, with the added assurance that you haven't made any mistakes that would invalidate your vote.

(Be confident in your ranking from most to least preferred before you begin, because if you make an adjustment that throws off a large chunk of the ranking, even by one, you'll have to edit the lot manually.)

Once you're done, if you want a paper copy click "printer friendly" and then "print". I found, though, that even when I selected the options in the printer dialog box to try to force it to one page, this worked poorly. I had to shrink it to 70% size to fit on one side of A4 paper, which for me was too small to read comfortably. But then I blew it up to 135%, and for WA that put groups A-J on one side and K-UG on the other of a single sheet of A4. Perfect!