Euroa’s Dustin Perry is running for the Senate in this year’s federal election, using the power of people to influence his vote.
Mr Perry said he would run for the party Flux, which, he said, had only been established in recent years.
He said party founders Max Kaye and Nathan Spataro had created a mobile phone app. Those living in a specific electorate with an elected Flux party candidate would be able to download it.
Everyday people will influence the votes of the candidates by voting on the very same issue via the app.
‘‘All those votes go to the politician and tells them which way to vote on everything; so everything is literally getting done the way people want it,’’ Mr Perry said.
For Mr Perry, it was simply stumbling across the Flux website coupled with a growing interest in politics that led him to run for the party.
After receiving the link to its website Mr Perry contacted Mr Kaye and Mr Spataro to find out more.
‘‘We emailed each other for a few weeks,’’ he said.
Finally the duo asked if he would meet them the next time he travelled to Sydney. It was here they asked Mr Perry to run as a candidate.
Mr Perry became heavily involved in political campaigning in 2017 when he wrote a letter to then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull urging for more funding for brain cancer research.
‘‘I’m also on a strategic advisory board with Brain Cancer Australia,’’ he said.
Mr Perry said one of the huge benefits to the party’s methodology was the fact it elminated the temptation for politicans to trade votes.
‘‘With our system if (the public) voted yes, there’d be no question about which way to go,’’ he said.
‘‘If we only get one senator elected I suppose there’s only one vote that’s being controlled by the system but if there was a whole group (of senators) it would make a lot more difference.’’
Mr Perry said the app would be completely immune to being hacked, meaning all votes would stay anonymous.
‘‘It’s on blockchain technology which is the one same used for crypo currency; it’s impossible to hack it,’’ he said.
As the election approached, Mr Perry said it was difficult for Flux candidates to express their views on political issues as they were entirely influenced by people power and what the people wanted.
‘‘We actually have a ‘no policy’ policy so there’s no chance of being biased either way ... it’s literally just going off the votes,’’ he said.
To find out more about Flux, visit its website https://voteflux.org