AlexWhite.org » Elections

The importance of design for political campaigns

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 00:27:32 +0000

Everyone refers to the Obama campaign as benchmarks for so much in political campaigning, so forgive me while I do the same. Below is a video from the99percent, a think-tank in the US that has a series of talks, lectures or seminars that they video and put on the web. There’s a lot of really interesting stuff on their Vimeo channel, so check it out.

The video below is of Scott Thomas, the design director for the Obama campaign. It’s worth watching if you’re involved in a political campaign, because it underscores the importance of solid, quality design as part of the political, election process. Scott talks about how getting a consistent design across all communications channels was a major part of his role with his counter-part, the art director.

The design of the Obama campaign is widely considered to be excellent, and a real benchmark for political campaigns to aspire to. Scott talks about how much of it was done on the fly, but underpinning it all was the goal of consistency, so that emails, direct mail, leaflets, yard signs, stickers and so on were all the same.

Check out the video:

Scott Thomas: Designing the Obama Campaign from 99% on Vimeo.

(Aside: Yes We Can, the book I reviewed last week, was designed by Scott Thomas.)

The recent UK election is a good example of why design is important – good because it was of a high standard and because it is not the Obama campaign.

Both the Tory and the UK Labour designs were very visually distinctive. And with a geographically smaller electoral field, and with greater centralisation for the design key materials (e.g. billboards, posters, how to votes, etc), both Tories and Labour were able to have very consistent designs – consistency online and print.

How the Tories lost the unlosable election

admin — Sun, 09 May 2010 22:18:59 +0000

With negotiations between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats taking place as I write, it’s worth considering why the Tories are in this invidious position.

A few months ago, David Cameron and his coterie were riding high in the polls, with expectations high that Labour would be smashed at the ballot box. The rout never eventuated, and although the Tories picked up around 97 new seats, they did not end up with the thumping majority they wanted. Despite the apathy towards Labour and the hype around Clegg, it turns out Britons could just not force themselves to vote Tory.

Recriminations are now starting, with anger toward David Cameron and his inner circle bubbling to the surface:

Angry Conservatives are telling the party’s leadership that David Cameron must break up his “chums circle” running the party and bring on board veterans who were largely excluded from the election campaign.

Amid mounting recriminations over Cameron’s failure to secure an overall parliamentary majority, Tory anger is focused on the tight circle that ran the campaign and the relatively inexperienced shadow ministers who sold the Tory message on television.

Conservative officials, who will start to be laid off tomorrow, turned on the party’s director of strategy, Steve Hilton, in a series of tense encounters on Friday. Hilton is blamed for the big society, the party’s central campaign message about embarking on the biggest devolution of power in a generation, that crashed on the doorstep and is being dubbed by senior party figures as “gimmicky nonsense”.

There is also anger that David Cameron so readily agreed to the now famous television debates. While the Tories (and certainly David Cameron) believed that the debates would contrast Brown and Cameron quite starkly, they didn’t take into account the Clegg-factor, who undermined Cameron’s message of change. The Tories’ “change” message (apart from being the most vacuous political slogan of all) was also a crowded space, with the Greens Party and Liberal Democrats also calling for change.

Ultimately however, I think it comes down to the fact that David Cameron and the Tories just didn’t convince the majority of voters that they were no longer the party of Thatcher. During the campaign, the message of “Big Society” didn’t wash – and it seemed too much like code for cuts to public services.

Although people were sick of Labour, not enough people wanted to go back down the road to the 80s. Cameron’s continual “trashing” of the Conservative brand probably reinforced this notion – with his declarations that the Tories were no longer the “nasty party” simply reminding voters that they hated the Tories under Thatcher.

The Tories may end up forming government – confirming that the Liberal Democrats are no progressive party in the process – but they certainly did not win the election campaign.

One senior Tory said: “If we had not had the television debates we would now be in government with an overall majority. Debates, plus big society and gimmicky nonsense equals a hung parliament. No debates, plus core message and proper politics would have equalled victory.”

Britain’s first internet election?

admin — Tue, 04 May 2010 03:33:25 +0000

TechPresident and CNN International are posing the question whether this UK election is the first “social media” election. Certainly both Labour and the Tories have made extensive use of the Internet, including iphone apps, and innovative web apps. We’ve seen Twitter and Facebook used extensively, and David Cameron was widely reported in the election commentary as having mastered online campaigning.

However, in my view, this is not a “social media” or “internet” election. Rather, this is the first TV election in the UK. This election has had the first televised leaders debates in British history. Television is still the main mass-media communication channel, and up until this election, political parties in the UK have been unable to run TV ads with saturation coverage that we get in Australia or the US. The debates have acted as de facto election ads, with the leaders under pressure to give polished performances.

The television performances of the leaders have far outweighed the effects of the parties social media campaigns, although strong local campaigns in individual constituencies may affect a close outcome. Good use of social media in those campaigns obviously help.

Although this UK election is the “TV election”, we’ve also seen a glimpse of the future of UK election campaigning – making extensive use of the power of the internet to mobilise supporters, gather donations, and contact swinging voters. The energising of party supporters and activists online will continue to grow, and using cloud-based web apps (like MyConservative or Labour’s MemberNet) will become essential for modern parties in the UK, US and elsewhere.

This post is part of Project 52 – one blog post per week for the entire year.

Abbott’s “Sarah Palin moment” is good news for Tony Abbott

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 04:18:10 +0000

Tony Abbott has developed more policy on the run while running off his mouth as a speech in front of a bunch of wealthy West Australian industrialists.

“There has got to be a system which encourages people to take up work where that work is available and certainly the idea of having people on the dole where there is relatively unskilled work freely available, I think the Australian public don’t like that idea very much.”

Unsurprisingly this suggestion – cutting unemployment benefits of under-30s who refuse to spend the several thousand dollars it requires to get to WA to work in a regional mining community – has created a bit of controversy. Abbott’s basically declared that he doesn’t want the nice people vote or the lazy dole bludger vote.

It is clear where this policy thoughtbubble came from:

The latest UK Tory election poster.

David Cameron’s policy is to cut benefits for “dole bludgers”:

This is our new welfare contract: do the right thing and we will back you all the way. But fail to take responsibility – and the free ride is over.

It’s fairly clear that Abbott and the Liberals are aping the UK’s neo-Thatcherite Tory Party on more than just their website.

I wonder how much more Tory policy will be carbon-copied by Abbott before the next Federal Election?

Lessons from the (Modern) Prince, Part 4: Understanding the Greens in Tasmania

admin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:31:59 +0000

Following a fortnight of uncertainty after the 2010 Tasmanian election, the Greens Party led by former advertising guru Nick McKim, have flexed their muscles to effectively appoint the ALP as minority governing party.

This bloke is probably really unhappy.

This act by the Greens Party came after both major parties refused to negotiate with the Greens, and made this a part of their election pitch during the campaign. The end result, Labor 10 seats, Liberals 10 seats, and Greens Party 5 seats, saw the Liberal Party get more votes overall than Labor. During the campaign, with the threat of a hung parliament – no realised – both Liberal and Labor said that if there was a tie in seats, the party with the most votes would be given the opportunity to form government.

Denied the ability to negotiate with Labor or Liberals over ministerial portfolios or policy, and apparently ignored by the Governor over the last week, Nick McKim and the Greens Party announced that they would support a Labor government:

Nick McKim announced via a southern newspaper today that his party would offer support to the incumbent government by not moving or supporting motions of no-confidence in parliament unless there was evidence of gross malfeasance, maladministration or corruption.

Their decision of course is entirely opportunistic and unprincipled. But that’s fine. Because the Greens Party, like all modern political parties, are principally concerned with gaining and exercising power. And luckily Machiavelli can help us decipher the Greens Party’s decision.

This article is a part of Project 52 – one post per week for the year.

Whenever those states which have been acquired as stated have been accustomed to live under their own laws and in freedom, there are three courses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute, and establishing within it an oligarchy which will keep it friendly to you. Because such a government, being created by the prince, knows that it cannot stand without his friendship and interest, and does its utmost to support him; and therefore he who would keep a city accustomed to freedom will hold it more easily by the means of its own citizens than in any other way.

Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter V

In this case, the (modern) prince is the Greens Political Party. Acquiring a state in this case is gaining significant political power over the political processes in Tasmania.

“…there are three courses for those who wish to hold them: the first is to ruin them, the next is to reside there in person, the third is to permit them to live under their own laws, drawing a tribute…” The three options open to the Greens Party after “acquiring” Tasmania were:

Ruin them: The Greens Party could have continued to hold both Labor and Liberal to ransom, and perpetuate the political stasis in Tasmania, where no major party could effectively govern. The Greens Party would have benefited by keeping both other parties in a state of crisis, able to topple either (or both) at their whim, unless both supported each other. Obviously, this was the least politically acceptable for the Greens Party – who’ve already been damaged by accusations of blackmail, and holding Tasmania to ransom.
Reside there in person: This was the Greens Party’s preferred option – the modern equivalent of having a place in the ministry with a formal arrangement. The Greens wanted to exercise power from within the government. That’s why Nick McKim constantly said he wanted to negotiate. He desperately wanted to reside within cabinet, and control the government and the governing party from this powerful vantage point.
Draw a tribute: The final option – the one that we can see today – is for the Greens Party to choose another party (Labor) to govern, then extract political concessions. Nick McKim is hoping that Labor will be so beholden to the Greens Party that he will be able to exercise political power over the government without being a minister in cabinet.

The upshot of this is that twelve years of Labor continues in Tasmania. As in South Australia, it’s time for Labor to go back out to the community and reconnect – it did after all experience a large swing against it. The disaster that would have been a Liberal government is averted.

Unfortunately, Labor is now at the mercy of a ruthless, opportunistic political party under the leadership of Nick McKim. It must be wary of its vulnerability to the Greens Party, and forge its own path.

Why the conservatives are wrong on the economy

admin — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:11:44 +0000

UK Labour media master Alastair Campbell has an excellent post on his blog today about how the Tories consistently fail on strategy, even if they excel on tactics. He basically makes the point that even though the media is on their side, and they are able to get their line in the paper each day, their argument that Labour is to blame for the recession (rather than responsible for the recovery out of the global financial crisis).

Because Alastair’s blog is rather eccentric and doesn’t have a permalink to his articles (and it’s not currently in the Archive), I’ve reproduced the article below.

For the nth time, I will point out the difference between strategy and tactics and suggest that David Cameron and George Osborne are rather better at the latter than the former.

Watching Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and Peter Mandelson take apart the Tories’ National Insurance deception – glad to see they were calling a spade a spade – was a reminder of that esssential Tory weakness.

They assume that if they get a good media hit out of something, they have won the day. And they think if they win enough days in the media war, they will win with the public.

Yet even with the media heavily loaded in their favour, and even with the hit they enjoyed with their NICs rabbit the other day, and the roll-out of business support, it does not appear to have had the desired efffect. And it is interesting that is they who want to move the debate away from this particular issue, and Labour and the Lib Dems who want to keep a focus upon it.

I had all but forgotten about the James Report until GB mentioned it this morning. It brought back awful memories of the last campaign in 2005 when this heavy tome was unleashed upon us, identifying all sorts of areas where government could save money and so fund the promises being made by the Tories.

It took a while, but bit by bit we pulled it apart until its credibility was gone. The same is now happening to the four page memo on which DC and GO appear to be basing their entire economic ‘strategy.’

By happy coincidence, this morning’s press conference took place against the backdrop of an OECD report suggesting the UK was better placed than other countries to emerge from the recession strongly.

That sense of recovery, and the government’s role in it, is without doubt one of the reasons why the Tories are failing to pull away in the way they had hoped to by this stage of the campaign. But the inexperience and judgement of DC and GO are also factors, as is the sense many people have of their elitism and their lack of connection with most people’s lives.

One of the most efffective parts of this morning’s event was when Alistair Darling reminded people of the serial misjudgements Osborne and Cameron made at the time the global economic crisis struck. This latest misjudgement – a promise of a tax cut without real explanation as to its funding days after saying the deficit was priority number 1 – stands in a long line.

As GB mentioned a few times in PMQs exchanges in the last year or so, the Tories were wrong on the recession and wrong on the recovery. Tactics will only take you so far if your strategic response to the single most important event of the last Parliament, and the single most important issue for the next one, is wrong.

Now, without over-emphasising the similarity, in my view the Liberals have made exactly the same mistake. They are focusing on debt and interest rates, and slamming the Stimulus Package that saved Australia from the recession that the UK and the rest of the OECD is experiencing.

This is a strategic error for the same reasons that it’s an error for the Tories to focus on National Insurance. Australia has the best economy in the developed world with amazingly low levels of unemployment, and most Australians recognise this fact.

Abbott (and Turnbull and Nelson) has picked the wrong side of this economic argument.

David Cameron on the campaign trail

admin — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 22:06:19 +0000

Just before the election was called, there were some very interesting articles about David Cameron and the UK Tory Party’s approach to online campaigning. The Tories (like most opposition parties, such as the Democrats with Obama in 2008, and Labor in 2007 with Kevin 07) are being quite innovative and creative with their online activities.

A lot of what he is doing is fairly standard fair, but amazingly it is only being slowly adopted by governing parties.

For example, the Tories campaign is using Google Ads effectively:

Within seconds, anyone Googling “boilers” or using the phrase in Gmail will find a link to a “prebuttal” budget document on the Conservatives’ home page — a rolling response, updated in real time as the Chancellor speaks. Once Darling sits down, Osborne’s aides race to read the giant document supporting the speech, pulling together an official response within the hour, which is in turn rolled out through a further set of Google ads.

Cameron also pioneered UK politicians using YouTube to bypass the mainstream media and speak directly to voters (and in the process, generate a lot of free media coverage).

The very first clip was to be of the Tory leader at home with his family. Cameron and Hilton debated the risks: let the public into your house and you may never get them out. But they went for it. On Saturday September 30, 2006, the day conference opened, The Guardian’s headline declared: “Tories unveil their secret weapon: webcameron”. It was a radical step: conferences normally kick off with a big policy announcement, not a YouTube clip. The videos themselves were even more unusual: a strikingly intimate portrait, complete with Cameron wearing rubber gloves as he talked politics doing the dishes.

Furthermore, Cameron’s MPs have also engaged with social media, as this Facebook example shows:

As the Conservative candidate for the marginal seat of Dover and Deal, he had become used to odd questions. Even so, this Facebook message was unusual. Elphicke scribbled a reply: he was, he said, against it. But who wanted to know? The correspondent turned out to be an 18-year-old pupil from Dover Grammar, who had Googled Elphicke’s website and followed the link to Facebook.

Questions from other pupils followed –”Why isn’t there anything in Dover for us to do at night?” asked one — and before long Elphicke was using his Facebook page to connect with his young constituents. One set up a Facebook group to help him get elected, which now has 71 fans. A few dozen volunteered for his campaign.

However, the Tories have been criticised for spending huge amounts of money on their social media efforts, including several unsuccessful campaigns that had little return on investment.

This is something to watch out for: you don’t need to spend millions of dollars (or even large sums) to use social media to engage with your supporters and voters in general. You should also be careful about jumping on every social media fad that comes along.

This article is part of my Project 52 posts – one post per week over the year.

Growing your movement: advice from Karl Rove

admin — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 22:37:04 +0000

Karl Rove was responsible for George Bush’s election win over Al Gore in 2000, and denies being involved in the Swift Boating of John Kerry in 2004. His reputation as a political strategist without equal is deserved, as he invented the micro-targeting and individualisation of campaign communications with direct mail.

The Tea Bag movement has possibly the stupidest name of any political movement in history.

With the Tea Party movement at risk of running out of puff in the US, Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal (paywalled, but he replicates it on his website here) that the tea baggers need to keep up momentum.

To maintain their influence, tea partiers will have to maintain their current energy and concern over health care and federal spending.

I suggest that to do that tea partiers design a citizen’s pledge and then ask friends and neighbors to sign it with them. The pledge should make five concrete commitments.

The first would be to educate themselves about the key issues of health care, spending, deficits and the economy. The second commitment would be to ascertain with certainty where their candidates for the U.S. Senate and House stand on these issues.

The third would be for each signatory to agree that they will register and then vote this fall for candidates they personally believe best represent their views on these issues.

Such a pledge would also draw on the tea party movement’s record of spontaneous growth with a fourth commitment that each signatory make a manageable list of 10 to 25 people whom they would individually approach to take the pledge.

The fifth and final commitment would be that each signatory personally see that each of their recruits register and vote.

These steps would build on the natural inclination of tea party groups to use social networking tools and draw on the energy of people fresh to politics looking for ways to affect the country’s direction.

The advice is applicable to any grassroots movement or campaign. The use of pledges is a distinctly American tool, but their use is growing, and could be used in place of a petition.

In Australia, without the need to “get-out-the-vote” or enroll people to vote, can still use pledges to motivate campaign or movement supporters to some other call to action.

Connected candidates: Beyond Twitter

admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:13:44 +0000

Most political candidates are on Twitter and Facebook – using these social media tools to reach out to younger voters, and instantly communicate with supporters, the public and the media.

I’ve written previously about how political candidates can use social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, Google Apps and how campaigns have made use of mobile technology like SMS and iphone apps.

Lisa Johnston, Democrat candidate for Kansas Senator has put her Foursquare profile on her web page.

Now, iphone-enabled Democratic candidate Patrick Kennedy is using new social media tool Foursquare to let voters know his location.

Foursquare is a free iphone app (available on Android phones also) that lets you update your friends about your location. It’s designed to help friends meet up if they are nearby, such as at a cafe or bar. It can link into Twitter as well.

It is a little “weird” that people can follow a candidate’s every move, Kennedy admits. But he said it makes him stay active. “If I say I am going to be out there representing people this holds me to account. I can’t hide with this tool.” Kennedy said he was recently contacted by someone who saw he had checked in down the road and wanted to know why the candidate did not stop by his group. A visit was quickly arranged.

This example shows the potential usefulness of Foursquare, as it focuses in on one of the applications of Twitter for candidates: letting local constituents and media know about your attendance at community events. Candidates could easily use Foursquare like Kennedy has: to link in with locals, and promote their activities. Opportunities to get local media also arise, as local journalists can link in to the candidate’s activities (sometimes the sheer fact that the candidate is using social media is newsworthy).

Key to this social media tool is the smart phone – an iphone, android phone or Blackberry. Political candidates and their key campaign staff should all have smart phones of some kind that can easily update a variety of social media sites – Twitter, Facebook and others like Foursquare. There should also be the ability to take photos and videos.

Five effective political lobbying tools for unions

admin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:41:09 +0000

Unions and union members are the largest voluntary associations in Australia, representing millions of workers in tens of thousands of work places. Legislation can have a profound impact on the rights and entitlements of working people, such as changes to occupational health and safety, tax, industrial relations, and trade and industry policy.

It is therefore entirely natural for unions and union members to lobby parliamentarians. Over the last few years, many unions have increasingly sent delegations of members to Canberra or State Parliaments to meet with key Members of Parliament, Ministers and advisors.

With the Federal election coming up this year, and state elections in Victoria in November 2010, it is timely to consider some effective lobbying tools. I’ve written here about two tips for union members to lobby their MPs – which is pretty general advice. Below are five more concrete tools for unions and union members to lobby their MPs.

1. Direct Contact

Direct contact covers a range of different tools, including letters, phone calls, emails, and faxes, urging a certain position on a specific issue.

Letters: Letters are fairly effective, but only if they are written by local constituents. Members of Parliament tend to ignore letters from people outside their electorates. They also tend to ignore “form letters” – since it is obvious that they are from the same campaign. Far better to get union members to write their own letters but provide “taking points” or an issue briefing so that members can easily see the main issues, but write the letter in their own words.
Phone calls: Again, phone calls are only valuable from constituents (this will be a theme), and it is unlikely that any callers will be able to personally speak to the MP. However, the electorate officers will take notes of calls, especially if there are lots of calls about the same issue. Unions considering this should provide talking points for their members, as well as some simple Q and As so that the members can rebut any party or government lines.
Emails: Email campaigning was originally thought of as revolutionary. Supposedly you could get hundreds or thousands of people to press a button and send an email to a boss or politician. However, recently it’s become clear that for email campaigns to succeed, the volume of emails must by truly massive. Eric Lee suggests that an email campaign needs a minimum of 5,000 or so emails, and from my experience in organising several email campaigns, this is about on the money. Politicians get so many emails that its easy for them to ignore email campaigns of any size except the truly massive. Filtering technology allows MPs to easily partition their inboxes to that it doesn’t impact their work. Similarly, by emailing MPs, Ministers or a boss, you hand over the contact details of your supporters. In several cases, I’m aware of Ministers and bosses emailing each of the protesters back with a carefully written rebuttal of the campaign. Unions should be aware of this eventuality and plan for a contingency. Nevertheless, email campaigns are great ways to build your email lists. Personal, custom written emails from your supporters are far more effective, and a letter has more power than an email.
Fax: This is a fairly old-school lobbying technique, and mass-fax campaigns do little except waste paper. I’ve spoken with several MPs who’ve been subject to fax campaigns, and in each case they advised me that their electorate officers disposed of the mass faxes. The net impact: zero.

The general advice, which is fairly standard, is that personal emails, letters and calls from constituents are more effective than form emails and letters. Phone calls are more effective than letters, which are more effective than emails. Faxes (in my view) are least effective.

2. Personal Intercepts

Personal contact is most effective of all. The contact need not be with the politician, but can be with their electorate officers and advisors. There are several places that this personal contact can occur: meetings in the MP’s electorate or parliamentary office, at fundraisers, debates, or public events like street-stalls or town-hall meetings. Unions in Australia can also try to make contact with Labor MPs or advisors at branch meetings or policy committee meetings.

This kind of contact can be either union members, or officials. In either case, the person making contact should be properly briefed on the issue, and, most importantly, seek some kind of commitment. This could be a formal meeting, a pledge (see below) or some kind of assistance or statement.

Contact can then be followed up – and the union should consider whether this follow up can be made public. For example, the union could write a letter to the local paper reporting on the meeting and any outcomes. They could write a blog post on their website. Or they could get the union member to call the local talk-back radio to recap the encounter. Of course, the union and union members should make sure that they are not revealing discussions that they undertook to keep confidential.

3. Pledges and Surveys

This is a tactic used often in the USA, and sometimes by conservative groups in Australia. They are surveys or pledge letters sent to MPs asking them for a public statement on their position on a particular issue.

The pledge can be useful for both political persuasions. For example, the union could send a pledge asking the candidate or MP to pledge that “I, candidate X, pledge not to vote to to remove the rights of working people…” If the candidate or MP responds in an unfavourable way (or does not respond at all), that is an opportunity to get some local news.

Similarly, MPs or candidates that respond positively can be future allies on that issue, and could be followed up with a letter or personal visit.

4. Social Media

I’ve written extensively on how unions can use social media. During elections, social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can be useful as both a media aggregator for campaign media stories, and also to disseminate key messages.

In my view, email is the most effective way to get your message out and to have supporters actually do something in the real world. Email is also useful in building a following on Facebook or Twitter. Analytics can ensure that you can see how effective your efforts are.

Importantly, social media is not a magical solution, but it can make a small campaign look much larger than it really is.

It is also useful platform to get free media. Political parties do this all the time by releasing a campaign advertisement on YouTube rather than on television. This ad nevertheless gets played on prime-time news, amplifying its effect much more than it ever would by itself. A key element to ads like this is production quality – the YouTube ads should be television quality in both sound and vision.

5. SMS/Text Messaging

Smart phones are becoming ubiquitous and almost everyone with a mobile phone knows how to send and receive text messages. The technology to use SMS effectively is also becoming affordable, giving supporters and union members instantaneous updates, event details, campaign messages and links to online campaign websites.

Similarly, unions can also encourage members to send text messages to MPs or bosses.

It boggles me that the ACTU Rights at Work campaign doesn’t have an iPhone app or apps for Android or Blackberry phones (UPDATE: I’m advised that work is being done on an iPhone and Android app – although there is not one currently). Similarly, I’m aware of no Australian political party with an iPhone app (although that’s the subject of another post).

Iphone apps for unions could have a range of uses, including making campaign videos and other media available on a member’s phone, as well as make facts and figures available immediately, and allow members to be directly “patched” to an MP’s office to have a phone conversation. Iphone apps could also allow union members to sign petitions and send emails on the go.

Most of the tools I’ve gone through here are fairly standard and mostly low-tech. I hope to see some innovation from the union movement, both in Australia and for the mid-term elections in the United States.

With most Australians online and owning mobile phones, even unions that cover blue collar industries, or low-paid service sectors will find that their members have regularly checked email addresses, Facebook accounts and oft-used SMS capable phones.