We need to use every weapon at our disposal and that includes voting. But whenever you talk about this subject, someone who has taken the black pill turns up and tells you that ‘we cannot vote our way out of this!’. To which I reply, how would we know, how many candidates on our side have actually run for office?
There have been a lot of candidates that we hoped were on our side. Occasionally we even got it right, they really were on our side. Sometimes we got flawed candidates, people who once in a while did the right thing in our eyes. But far too often we have hoped against hope. They have been traitors.
Which is why we need our own candidates.
I’ve heard the arguments against it, but they are defeatist and I hate defeatism.
The first thing to do is to get organised, five people are what you need to get started. You can work with less but it gets overwhelming fast. One is the candidate and another is their campaign manager, everyone else is a worker. The campaign manager worries about running the campaign, not the candidate. They need to concentrate on policy, what do they support and what will they do if they are elected.
The other way is to find a candidate who is already running and help them. Remember you don’t need someone who you agree with 100%, because that probably isn’t going to happen. 90% is good, so’s 75%, hey even 60% isn’t that bad. Push that Overton Window in our direction.
Most people think that the campaign starts when an election has been announced. The time to get ready for the election is when the last one finished. Make sure that the candidate is known in the local area. Use the candidate’s strengths, if they are a people person then get them meeting people. If they aren’t then do letterboxing. Let people know he exists.
Too many people think that to win we need the Prime Minister or President to have any influence. Many believe that once that has been won then everything will be easy. Neither of those things are true.
Running for the Senate is usually what people on our side think about when it comes to running a candidate. There are two really big reasons not to run for the Senate. One, everyone thinks the same thing, so the Senate ballot paper has over 100 candidates and is over a metre long. Two, it’s really hard to campaign in a Senate race; how do you get large numbers of people over a large area to even know that you exist?
Personally I think the House of Representatives has a better chance of working because each electorate is a confined area. In my electorate we have a large number of candidates. In others I noticed only two…two!
Picking the correct electorate to run in can make a big difference. They don’t need to live in the electorate that they run in but it does have advantages. If they do not live there then they at least need to know about the electorate.
An Australian Federal electorate has around 100,000 voters in it.
A Victorian state electorate has around 20,000 voters in it.
Local governments are elected via Wards which vary quite a lot in how many voters are in each, from hundreds to 20,000.
To win we need to fight on every level. It’s not a choice, either we fight or we automatically lose….which is where we are right now.
Now everyone likes to win, but the most likely outcome is that you will support someone and they will lose. Learning to fight is part of fighting. And small wins are better than automatic defeats. Running a candidate is good, getting votes is good, getting enough votes that you get financial support is also good. Each small victory can help to win bigger victories. Each is a step towards getting candidates elected.
Far too many on our side want someone else to do something about this. That someone else needs to be you.
Originally published at Upon Hope. You can find Mark’s Subscribestar here.