Australia is in the middle of one of the most cynical election campaign cycles that I have ever witnessed. The quality of the tone from both of the major parties has been mostly negative; with neither side really giving us a grand vision of the future.
In the electorate of Warringah and the suburb of Mosman where I work, one of the real ironies is that I have seen more campaign posters for the election of a high school's next Captain than I have for one of the candidates of a major political party. I think that is because the party in question has made the assumption that they are going to win the seat by divine right rather than putting up a good candidate.
By looking at the various promises and statements on this high school's election for its next Captain, I have seen the usual glib promises as well as one boy's poster which has "Vote 1" and his name across the top and a photo of him giving two thumbs up to the camera and with the caption "Heeeey!" at the bottom. Even though I know nothing about this person, I do know that on the poster at least, he is not making promises that he can not keep.
If I blow away the dust from the card file of my mind and open one of the drawers, I will find an entry for the election campaign that I ran oh so many years ago, back in 1995, when I was in Year 11. I can not believe that in all of the years that I have kept this blog (which is also not quite 25 years), that I have not relayed the following story. It is not only a tale of mirth and woe but of truly epic shenanigans. Okay... it is a tale of some non-zero quanta of shenanigans.
This is the tale of SRC Election '95.
In High Schools in Australia, usually later in the year, the students of Year 11 will vote for who they want to be the next School Captain. Probably in other countries this will be given the name of School President or something else and whoever this is becomes the de facto public face of the school for any formal dignitary events.
Depending on the system in the high school itself, there will also be an election for the Vice-Captain and the Prefects, though this is likely a spillover of the regular election. The Captain, Vice-Captain, the Prefects, and the Class Captains, collectively make up a group known as the Student Representative Council or SRC; which in the world of media such as novels and TV shows is imagined as an absurdly powerful group but in reality has little to no power at all.
The election of the School Captain is interesting because it invariably will be hijacked by teachers who want to give their students a practical exercise in civil democracy; where the students become their own campaign teams and the election itself is mechanically not that much different to other elections but on a much smaller scale.
The problem with the election of the School Captain, is that it very quickly devolves into a popularity contest (which almost by definition, it is). When you hold an actual popularity contest among a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds, every single one of the worst traits of teenagers immediately rises to the top. High School is already a swirling miasma of hormones and bullying and nastiness, which is not helped by the pressure cooker environment which comes about because these same bunch of 16 and 17 year olds are there every single day and in some cases for their fifth year in a row.
Way back in 1995 when I was in Year 11, I was sitting in an English class when someone whom I didn't exactly get along with but who was neither unfriendly to me, asked how many votes it would take to become a Prefect because he quite rightly assumed I was a maths nerd. As we had 120 students in Year 11 and there were 9 positions including School Captain that were up for election, then then assuming that everyone voted, then the number of votes that someone would need would be 14.
This person (who I shall call Nick), wanted to become a Prefect; not because he was a budding politician or because he wanted the spotlight but because he wanted to sit in SRC meetings and eat free biscuits and drink tea. Nick's election campaign for 1995 SRC was the most honest platform of any candidate that I have ever seen. Nick ran on just one election promise which was if elected he would 'Do Nothing'.
Running on an election campaign of Do Nothing is not exactly a good way to win votes though. It is nigh on impossible to get a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds to agree on anything, much less to get 14 of them to vote for you when presumably they already don't like you and your entire election platform is literally to do nothing.
I want you to imagine a 16 year old version of me. That version was shy, quiet, quite a bit sad, small, but still very very playful. I had no aspirations of running for School Captain and so I was never going to run. That didn't mean that the 16 year old version of me didn't like playing the game of democracy. I had already calculated it would take 14 votes to be elected to the SRC but as voting was voluntary, then all we needed to do was to reduce the turnout so that the number of votes needed was less. Basically if you know that you can not win, then your next best option is to change the state of play so that the win conditions are different.
I still have this trait. If I am playing a game of Football, Risk, Diplomacy, 500, Bridge, Hearts, whatever, and I know that I have no chance of winning, then because I know that it is a game and I know that winning is no longer an option, I will adopt the role of kingmaker, or an agent of chaos.
And so began not one but two election campaigns. Nick put up posters with his face on them; with the only words "Vote 1. Nick.". I worked out that with a roll of wide sticky tape and using the guillotine, that you could get four A6 posters out of a single A4 photocopy. At 1 cent per copy, for a mere 20 cents that was 80 small posters that could be put up. The question would then be to use them.
Remember, as someone who wasn't running for the office of School Captain and who was playing the election game for someone else who didn't want the office of School Captain, the set of win conditions was not how do you make people for someone but how to you get them to not vote at all. If you could increase voter apathy and convince them that the whole process was really dumb (which isn't hard), then they'd simply not bother to vote at all. So began the counter-campaign of the 1995 SRC Election: "Don't Vote".
With 80 A6 posters, the initial phase of the campaign simply meant putting them up next to any candidate's poster. The beauty of this was that because I wasn't running, nobody suspected that I was putting them up. High School politics is already riddled with cliques and groups, so I can only assume that everyone suspected everyone because within the week, there was already mass vandalism of people's posters.
The Monday morning assembly saw the Principal tell the whole school off for the shenanigans and no more campaign posters went up, except for the remaining "Don't Vote" posters which we (me and three friends) surreptitiously put up when we were sure that nobody was watching. By the end of the three week election campaign, the only election posters that were on the walls, were a few tattered A6 "Don't Vote" posters.
When the election finally happened, the total turnout of voters was abysmal. For the 9 positions, there were 19 votes; which meant that in a lot of cases, if you voted 1 in your own box, you were elected. Nick was elected to the SRC on his platform of doing nothing and eating biscuits and the job was done.
As I think about this story now, for the life of me I have no idea who our School Captain was, or who anyone else on the SRC was either. All that I am left with, is the story of a highly effective election campaign and as far as I know, the story of the only person who I know who fulfilled all of their election promises. I can only imagine that doing nothing and eating biscuits was not amenable to the aims of the SRC but when you have an elected body which in reality has little to no power at all, I don't suppose that it ever mattered.
Given that this story is now 27 years old, I am quite sure that most of the details when forensically examined will probably be wrong. Nevertheless, I can still remember roughly where a lot of posters were; including at the top of a flight of stairs next to Lab 4, the outside window ledge which was facing a walkway next to H2, and halfway up a staircase which doubled as the de facto pulpit from where addresses would be given on school assemblies in the mornings.
I also remember being told by Mr Menkes the History teacher, after the campaign that he quite liked the guerilla erosion of people's faith in democracy and that he'd worked out who pulled it off after seeing two of my friends in separate incidents, putting up a "Don't Vote" sign. I had played 500 with him on a school camp previously, and he'd worked out that when winning is no longer an option (or in this case never was an option), I will adopt the role of kingmaker.
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