Build a Ballot: A predator coming for your vote

It’s election time and dozens of advocates have emerged to “help” people vote the right way. The Australian public could certainly use some help. After all, successive Governments have been very careful not to legislate against telling falsehoods, making exaggerations, cherry picking or any of the other kinds of bullshit that people go on with; particularly within election advertising.

Full disclosure: I’m running for the Animal Justice Party in the seat of Makin in South Australia. I’ve been writing about animal issues for decades, as well as actively campaigning, working on Government Committees, etc. More recently, since 2009, I’ve been also writing about nuclear power; having been infected with a fact checking virus and consequently realised I’d believed all sorts of total bullshit for decades. I became a nuclear fan precisely because of my climate, environmental and animal protection concerns. The Animal Justice Party (AJP) policy, however is agnostic on nuclear. This annoys me somewhat, but anybody in any political party who pretends to believe in the sanctity every policy of that party is either stupid or a liar. People in some political parties, most famously the ALP, are rigidly bound to toe the party line on policy, which frequently makes them a little like lawyers defending someone they know is guilty. It would be silly of me to pretend I fully support AJP’s energy policy when a quick google search will find dozens of articles by me saying some very different things. End of disclosure.

One of these voter advice sites is Build a Ballot (BAB). They claim explicitly in their FAQ that: “We don’t mind how you end up voting, as long as it’s informed.”

BAB works by asking a voter if they agree with 36 statements. The statements are bundled into groups attached to a question. The question is followed with a little information intended to influence which statements you agree with.

For example.

Note the 3 parts:

1. The question

2. The “push” (I’ll explain this shortly).

3. The set of statements BAB is seeking your opinion on

   
   

You may not have thought deeply about one or more of the questions. Not everybody is interested in everything.

Or it might be among your particular obsessions. Or you may have devoted most of your brain space over decades to the AFL or Tik Tok. Or you may have sacrificed billions of neurons on the alter of beer, wine or Strongbow.

Happily BAB provides you with information to guide you.

Pollsters call this information “the push”, it’s intent is to shape your opinion on the subsequent information. Psychologists also study such things, but they call it framing. They know that how you answer questions depends critically on how they are asked and the context; usually what comes before. Magicians know all about this stuff too. They call it “forcing”. Subtle queues that they can use to get you to pick the card or number they want in a particular circumstance.

Many pollsters have a code of ethics preventing them from deliberately push polling. If you’ve ever commissioned any polling from a reputable company, you’ll be aware of the lengths they go to to avoid leading questions and other kinds of pushes.

I should point out that political parties fill out a similar BAB questionnaire with the same options. This is to enable BAB to match you with the best match among parties; based on the questions given. Any party with a spectacular policy that isn’t in the BAB list is out of luck. No-one visiting the BAB site will ever find out about it; not from BAB at least. If those parties had any notions for controlling the cost of living that aren’t included in the list, then they are out of luck.

Likewise, any party who had a different idea of what constitutes an important issue for voters is also out of luck. What if your party wants the Henry Tax Review implemented in whole or part? Tough luck.

Of course, during an election, everybody is trying to control the narrative about what voters are concerned about in the face of competition from the aforementioned AFL and booze.

There are large and important policy areas which don’t rate a BAB question. Things like mining, industry, family violence and trade, for example, don’t rate a question. If you are worried (or pleased) by the ongoing closure of Australia’s aluminium smelters, or the challenges to our capacity to make steel, then you are out of luck.

Perhaps I should forgive the limits of the BAB methodology. High profile policies of the major parties really do form the election narrative and trying to shift the focus to what me or anybody else thinks is important could reasonably be called just pissing in the wind. But I’d counter that BAB is allowing parties to set the agenda and not allowing people to tune their vote based on a more nuanced understanding of where parties and candidates stand on some really important issues; even if those issues aren’t on the mainstream media radar.

So yes, I reckon I could forgive all that.

But the push polling isn’t forgiveable. That pushes BAB provides shows very clearly that they aren’t interested in helping people find the party that suits them but pushing them in a particular direction.

For example, in the example above, you are primed to think that the (only) cause of high prices is big companies making big profits. There is no information on how much money is spent on the public service or what cuts could save. There is no information on the relative expenditure by Australians on food, energy, or transport, for example to identify which kind of response might be most fruitful.

The point here isn’t whether or not I support big companies making squillions of dollars, but the clear choice of information driving people towards support for particular statements. That’s exactly the definition of push polling.

BAB on industry, trade, companion animals, animal agriculture, critical minerals

Both majors have approaches to all of these issues, and you’d think more than a few voters would think they are important. But BAB has no questions on any of these.

As of 2022, over 70% of Australian households had one or more pets (based on here and here). The nexus of a cost-of-living crises, a rental crisis, the exclusion of pets from most rental properties, and no PBS for veterinary medicines, creates diabolical problems for many Australians. Yet BAB insists of letting the big parties control the narrative by not including a question on pets.

Keep in mind, I make absolutely no claim about non-partisan neutrality, so I can direct you to the AJP policy about veticare, designed to help those on a below-median income to manage without having to have their beloved companion animal killed because they can’t afford veterinary treatment.

BAB on housing

Housing has received plenty of press over the past year or two. Plenty of the attention has been because of a huge blip in Australia’s net immigration. In the year to June 2024, a net 446,000 people arrived, down from a record 536,000 in the 12 months before. There are three big streams of people who come to Australia; migrants, students and tourists. They all need accommodation.

Here’s BAB’s question.

Note that the push information says nothing about the impact of arrivals on demand. It focuses on one feature of the tax regime that encourages housing speculation and investment. It’s catch 22 here. We want investment in housing but we don’t want to use the tax system to encourage it? I’m not actually arguing in favour of these tax breaks, just pointing out that the problem is more complex than BAB suggests. At this point I could urge people to visit the AJP website and read our approach to housing and taxation.

As I’ve already said, I’ve got nothing at all against people advocating for this or that reform to fix a problem, my objection is when a blatant push polling advocacy group like BAB pretends to be an honest broker without an agenda.

BAB on electricity costs

Fully 1/3 of the BAB questions (3 of 9) relate to electricity and climate.

There is no question on energy costs, only on electricity costs. Perhaps BAB doesn’t appreciate that electricity is only about 25% of Australia’s energy use. Maybe it should be more, but that’s a separate question. Industrial heat is a critical problem all too frequently ignored.

Here’s the BAB electricity cost question.

The push information is that the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) reckons renewables are the cheapest form of electricity generation (my emphasis). That’s a neat trick. Nobody disagrees (much) with the CSIRO’s evaluation of generation costs. But everybody who knows anything about electricity knows that generation doesn’t determine the lion's share of your bill. That’s determined by distribution and transmission; the two areas where renewables make everything more expensive.

Renewables have another down side which doesn’t appear in our current bills. You need to build 2, 3 or even 5 times the generation. That’s called overbuild.

Here’s an estimate of costs from the US Department of Energy. They reckon adding more nuclear to their existing 20% will make their electricity even cheaper than it already is (about half the price of our electricity).

There are plenty of reasons for this, but the one they highlight is the overbuild. See the following image.

So BAB’s push is just that, a push. It isn’t an attempt to provide balanced information to help people navigate a complex topic.

BAB on climate

Then BAB moves on to climate.

The push assumes that Australia controls the climate; so it isn’t even true, let alone balanced and neutral.

The fact is that it doesn’t matter where China sells its wind turbines, solar panels and nuclear reactors. What matters is that China keeps producing them by the squillion and selling them; despite US tariffs. It’s not as if Australia is producing any clean technology to reduce emissions. Our approach is parasitic on the producers of the engineering of others.

The push ignores the big things within our power that would help globally; destock ruminants and stop exporting fossil fuels. It doesn’t matter where you install clean tech, it only matters that it gets rolled out. I strongly suspect that the author(s) of the push got emissions (a huge category) confused with electricity (which generates about 1/3 of our emissions).

BAB on nuclear

BAB doesn’t really have a nuclear question, but it does have a question where nuclear appears in one of the statements.

By the time you get to this question, you've already had plenty of renewable pushes. But they add another one, just in case you missed the others!

The new push is incredibly sloppy. I’ve already pointed out that the CSIRO hasn’t done whole of grid modelling with nuclear as an option, nor, as it happens, has Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). The astonishing implication that 40% of electricity from renewables is a big achievement is simply the result of being ignorant about the history of electrification growth. The BAB people simply don’t know anything about electricity or energy transitions. Why should they? They live in a country where the mainstream media is dominated by ignorance about all things nuclear (the ABC in particular), except the research community, which uses the technology for many and varied purposes.

Here’s a list of the top 30 countries ranked by the amount of annual electricity generation per person they built during a 15 year period.

Australia’s renewable rollout gets it into the chart at number 28, with 2.8 MWh/person added in the 15 years ending in 2024. But note that Australia is also on the chart at the top, at number 5, with 9.2 MWh/person during the 15 years to 1999. But that was with coal. Part of the reason coal is so cheap and fast to build is because engineers know how to build grids for big synchronous generators. Nobody has ever built a grid without them and there are many problems to solve.

The top performers historically are either nuclear, fossil fuels, or hydro. Iceland is an outlier. With a few hundred thousand people, all it needed to hit first place was a few multinational large hydro schemes for aluminium smelters. Australia has been inundated with cherry picked stories about a few reactors with massive cost and time overruns while ignoring the many successful nuclear rollouts. Japan built 60 reactors with a median build time of under 4 years. Japan doesn’t make the chart because during its nuclear rollout it was also building fossil fuel power plants en-masse.

Again, my point is that BAB’s information accompanying the question (and via previous questions) is just pushing people towards the statements it wants people to agree with. Its claim to just want people to be informed is mendacious.

And the rest?

BAB also has questions on transport, governance, education and healthcare. There is again more push information with clear bias. But this post has been long enough already. For a push poller to ask questions about Governance is a bit rich.

Summary

BAB is push polling, plain and simple. That makes it easy for them to nudge people in the direction they want. But they have used a second trick also. Kudos for this backup strategy. They have included far more statements consistent with ALP and Green policy announcements than they have which are consistent with Coalition policy announcements.

So if nudging fails, this stacking of the deck should deliver.

How should I feel about this? I’m generally pretty bloody angry at the moment. Angry that a party I’ve always hated is the only one with a half sensible electricity policy. Angry that the only party with a half reasonable energy policy is pro-cruelty to animals. Angry that the ALP and Greens are so amazingly ill-informed about both energy and the role of animal agriculture on the climate. Angry at left wing idiocy and the descent into dishonesty to win this election. Angry at the number of times the ALP has lied about the Coalition nuclear plan costing $600 billion. Angry that both major parties are sticking with policies aimed at driving up house prices and angry that homeowners are loving it. Angry that the ALP, Coalition and the Greens have electricity policies aimed at screwing renters and the poor. Angry that home owners are loving this too. Angry that these electricity policies will crush our equitable and efficient electricity grid in exactly the same way that the private motor car has made effective mass transit impossible. Angry that people see EVs as a solution to decarbonising transport. A plague on all their fucking houses.

How did we transform from the lucky country into 2nd place in the dumb ass capitol of the world competition? We know who is in first place. Perhaps I can just blame it all on social media.