In a brief section on a post a few weeks backed, I mentioned than Kybrook Farm, where I did my fieldwork, was going to be the first community in the country to vote in this year’s federal election. Today, it seems, was the day, as the mobile polling booths, 21 teams, begin rolling out in remote areas. By election day, there will have been 245 remote polling booths in total.

After the debacle of the census last year, in which entire communities of thousands of people were apparently ignored, it’s encouraging to see that the Australian Electoral Commission is doing what they can to ensure that everyone gets a vote.

Also encouraging is that the AEC is hiring some ‘linguists’ to assist with interpreting. I only hope they know that linguists don’t necessarily make very good interpreters. But I know that Kybrook has at least one fully qualified interpreter in three levels of Kriol, which is more than sufficient for the entire community.