Update, February 2019: The famous comic about Australia’s preferential voting system, starring Dennis the Election Koala and Ken the Voting Dingo, has been revised, updated, and completely redrawn in spectacular full colour! Please find it at its new home here.

This blog post will remain here, but if you’re looking for that comic and want to share it, please use the current version, not this one. Thank you!

Dennis the Election Koala gives Ken the Voting Dingo an important lesson in civics!

Any time there’s a federal election approaching, you’ll see and hear Australians saying things like, “I’d like to vote for [Minor Party/Independent] but the most important thing is to keep [Major Party A] out, so I’d better vote for [Major Party B].” But this concern doesn’t apply in Australia; we have a more elegant voting system than that. We seem to have picked up ideas about “wasting your vote” from American TV shows or something.

So here’s a comic designed to clear up this common misconception and explain how preferential voting works! It’s four pages long — just the right size for a pamphlet. I’ve tried to make it non-partisan and future-proof, and you are encouraged to share it online and in print. Letterbox your street or apartment building, or hand out copies at a polling booth! Scroll down and you’ll find the comic in various formats for sharing and printing. (EDIT: Now including a ‘radio friendly’ version!)



For sharing on the web:

For printing and copying a pamphlet:

Make an A5 pamphlet by printing a double-sided A4 sheet and folding it in half. Print a few and letterbox your street or building — or copy a whole bundle and hand them out at a polling booth! Remember, photocopying’s free when you do it at work.

Hi-res (PNG format) A4 sheet: Side 1, Side 2

PDF version — ready to simply print and fold

High resolution:

A4 pages, 300 dpi, aliased black-and-white. This is the size I drew them at, with my tablet. Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4

NEW!!! Radio-friendly version:

By popular request, I have created a ‘softer’ edit of the comic in order to make it as accessible as possible. This version contains no references to bums, farts, bastards, murder, babies or incest. (One funny cartoon animal still slaps another funny cartoon animal in the face though, because come on people.) If you had any reservations about sharing or letterboxing the comic, have them no longer!

700 pixels wide, single image (radio edit)

PDF version (radio edit) — ready to simply print and fold

— ready to simply print and fold High resolution: Page 1 (radio edit), Page 2 (radio edit); Pages 3 and 4 required no changes

DECLARING MY INTERESTS: I’m a member of the Australian Greens — a minor party, how about that! But this comic is intended to be non-partisan and informative. In fact, the whole message of the comic is, you can and should vote for exactly who you want to! We’re fortunate to have preferential voting in Australia so we ought to understand how it works.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License, if you were wondering. I should reiterate that the third page was derived from an infographic on the PEO website under the assumption that they wouldn’t mind.

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