the Miracle of Democracy...backing a winner...Greek-style

Comrades,

Wanderered down to the local polling booth on a gorgeous Saturday arvo in the Emerald City to, as my dear departed father would have said, "strike my blow for freedom", in the Canterbury state by-election, and overheard some young-ish Labor campaign workers chatting away gaily to voting punters in Greek.
Despite the influx of Korean, then Vietnamese, and now Chinese and Indian immigrants to our electorate, the children and grand-children of the original immigrant factory workers, the Greeks - who came here in big numbers as refugees after WWII - still live here, and for the first time in living memory [or almost certainly for the first time ever], they had one of their own as the official Pinko candidate in Sophie Cotsis, to boot home.
And with no Tory candidate to root for, the numbers in the Miracle of Democracy revealed that this district aint just pinko - it's bright red.
On a three candidate ballot paper, Our Soph of the ALP romped home by the length of the straight with, at last count, 65.8% of the first preference votes, the Christian Democratic Party [Fred Nile Group] stooge picked up 18.6%, while the Greens' un-reformed Trot trailed hopelessly behind in stone-motherless last with just 13.8% of the ballots.
The informal vote was surpisingly low at 4.9%, but the dyed-in-the-wool by-the-book Conservative voters stayed away - in droves.
In a compulsory election, the turn-out was woefully miserable...with only 71.2% of the electoral roll bothering to participate.
When and if those capitalist running dog sympathisers get their $55 infringement notices for not voting in the snail-mail, and they choose to take the matter down to the local Magistrate's Court to contest the fine, a plea of "I couldn't give a blue root, Your Worship" may or may not be an adequate and sufficient defence, depending on the beak's reading of the NSW Electoral Act.
Make the bastards pay! With court costs! Every last one of them!
You've gotta be in it, to win it.

(originally published 14-11-16)