In a representative democracy voting is one of our citizen powers and knowing our candidates is crucial to knowing who to preference.

We recognise that who you vote for is your choice.

At elections, the voters' job is to select the candidates who we think are most qualified and suited to represent us. We want to help you, the voters, make a well informed choice.

You will find links to each election's page in the relevant tab below.

Assisting voters - who helps voters decide?

The organisations and sites listed here all offer candidates a place to share information about themselves, in addition to their party and personal websites, Facebook and other social media sites.

They offer voters a place to find out about their candidates (a sort of one-stop-shop for voters).

 

 

Find out which ACT electorate you are in.

Find out your federal electorate here.

 CAPaD is a community supporter of Vote Easy, a non-partisan platform designed for candidates to share information with voters. Like Vote Easy, CAPaD believes voters should be able to find candidate information easily, and an informed voter will make good choices.

In the ACT, for federal elections, VoteEasy provides the one-stop-shop platform for candidates to share information about themselves with voters.

The Elections ACT has a Candidate Statement Page, active during the final weeks before an ACT election. More Elections ACT information for voters on voting is here.

ABC Vote Compass is a tool developed by political scientists to help you explore how your views align with the major parties. Usually federal elections.

For a more complete list of organisations, please see Sites helping voters get to know their MPs and candidates better at our Resources Hub.

The next federal election is scheduled for sometime in the next seven months (at October 2024); that is in the first half of 2025.

CAPaD plans to continue and expand on our educational activity for voters and candidates, parties and others around the topic of the representative job description and how to choose between candidates for the person most likely to do this job well for us and the public good.

More details will be added here and on our Events page as planning evolves.

 

Our 2022 election page with advice and suggestion to help you make an informed vote is here.

You can find the report against our education campaign here.

This figure, courtesy of Lee Yingtong Li (right click & open in new tab/window to enlarge and scroll) shows the preference flows for the second ACT senate seat. It confirms the importance of numbering every square on the senate ballot. Preference flows matter.

 

2019 Federal election

The 2019 Federal election showed us that a Federal election presents a different level of organisation compared to an ACT election. The issues are different and the number of candidates across House of Representatives and the Senate makes it a much larger exercise. All major party and most other minor party and independent candidates ignored our requests for candidate statements.

Our website traffic however increased: visitors grew to nearly 2000 from less than 100, and visits went from under 500 to 4000 during May 2019. So some one was interested in our candidate statements.

This comprised about 1460 views of candidate statements, as well as 337 reviews of the 2016 Federal election and 581 views of the 2016 ACT election pages.

 

2016 ACT Election Candidate Statement Exercise

The 2016 ACT Election is the first election that the Alliance attempted this type of exercise. It provided a valuable learning exercise for the Alliance in how to run such a process, and the importance of giving people the chance to know more about their candidates, separately to their Party platforms.

ACT Elections 2016 Document Downloads

 

 

Statement of non-partisanship

The Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy (CAPaD):

  1. Is strictly non-partisan in electoral matters;
  2. Does not support nor endorse any political party, their candidates or independents;
  3. Is committed to facilitating community participation in the political system including informed engagement in elections;
  4. Will share information about events and materials that invite community level participation but not formal campaign, Party or individual candidate material.

 

Statement of Educational Intent

CAPaD’s intent is to inform and educate the community, voters, candidates and parties that a different way to select and vote for candidates, that works for the public good, is possible. By focusing on what voters expect of representatives and so the qualities and attributes of candidates, we aim to strengthen democracy by improving citizen and community participation in the political process. This we understand will improve trust in government and in our representatives.

 

 

Authorised by Peter Tait, Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy.