Yesterday Pirate Party Australia met its campaign funding target of $10,000 entirely through crowdfunding, in preparation for the WA Senate election on 5 April.

Following the announcement that fresh elections would be taking place, the Pirate Party launched the fundraiser using Pozible, a crowdfunding website similar to Kickstarter, and has reached the $10,000 goal in just under two weeks. Supporters of the Pirate Party are still able to contribute to the fundraiser via Pozible, and all money will go directly towards purchasing campaign materials for the election.

“This is a fantastic show of support for Pirate Party Australia,” said Fletcher Boyd, lead candidate for the Senate in WA. “We are very thankful to our supporters for providing us with the funds to seriously give this election a go. Despite lacking wealthy sponsors, celebrity candidates, or a massive membership base, we have an enormous amount of grassroots enthusiasm as demonstrated by how quickly we were able to reach our goal.”

The Pirate Party would like to thank all those who contributed, especially those who contributed more than $250 to the campaign — Mitchell Carr, Adam Thomas, Matthew Schmidt, Dennis Au, Georg Sinn and Mark Walkom.

In keeping with the Pirate Party’s principles, preference allocations are being decided democratically by the Party’s Western Australian members and will be released to the public shortly. All members in Western Australia were given the opportunity to vote on their preferred group voting ticket (GVT), arranging the parties in order of preference.

“Not playing the preferencing game and getting involved in back door preference swaps has helped maintain our credibility and allowed us stick to our principles of transparency and democracy,” Mr Boyd continued. “We received an enormous amount of praise for not trading preferences with parties who contradict our core beliefs to attain a tactical advantage. We are not contesting the election to win at all costs, nor to gamble the future of the nation and the support of our voters away out of short-sighted selfishness.”

This is the Pirate Party’s third election at the Federal level, having previously contested the Senate in New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and Victoria at the Federal Election in September 2013, and the Seat of Griffith By-Election early last month, where the party came 4th in a field of 11 candidates.