Australia is one of only ten countries around the world that enforces compulsory voting for federal elections. Ask most people about it and they’ll passionately defend the laws that see voters fined for refusing to turn up to the polling booth. Compulsory voting is regularly credited with ensuring the bulk of the population considers political issues at least once every three years as well as forcing politicians to pay attention to the middle ground.
But what’s the point of compulsory voting if nearly one million eligible voters aren’t enrolled and thus won’t be able to cast a ballot on election?
It seems very inconsistent, to say the least, that our political system is based on the idea that all citizens are required to participate, yet the rules governing who is on the electoral roll (and therefore eligible to vote) are disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Australians.
How can we claim to have a system of compulsory voting when 1 in 5 Australians aged between 18 and 25 aren’t eligible to cast a ballot and therefore won’t actually be able to vote on election day?
The most frustrating part of the current situation is that it’s actually very easy to rectify – two minor changes to the way our electoral system works would enfranchise up to a million Australians and make our “compulsory voting” label much more accurate.
Currently Australians are required to proactively enrol to vote once they turn 18. It’s a pretty simple process that requires filling in an online form, sending it off to the Australian Electoral Commission and waiting for a letter confirming your enrolment. Even though that sounds easy, the fact that half of all 18 year olds aren’t registered to vote suggests there’s a problem.
“If we’re going to proudly declare ourselves a nation with compulsory voting laws, and then not do some pretty simple things to ensure that all voters actually have the right to vote on polling day, we’re hypocrites.”
There’s solid research that helps explain why some voters aren’t motivated to enrol the second they turn 18, including disengagement with politics generally and distrust in our political system. But the fact that voters are disengaged with politics isn’t an excuse to not do everything possible to ensure they have the right to vote on election day. Especially if we are going to claim we have compulsory voting.
The proportion of young voters who aren’t enrolled to vote is almost exactly the same now as it was in 2005 – approximately 20 per cent. The fact that it hasn’t changed much over time suggests the issue is less about growing dissatisfaction with our political system (even though that is probably occurring) and that the barriers are likely more structural.
So what are those barriers and how do we fix them?
One of the silliest laws we have is the one that sees electoral rolls close a minimum of four weeks before the election. This means that if voters don’t enrol a full month before election day they won’t have a chance to vote.
This time around the rolls are actually closing six weeks before polling day, because the Prime Minister has called the election much earlier than usual.
The fact is the majority of Australians are just not tuned into the current election campaign a full month and half out from voting day. Focus group research is backing up the view that most Australians consider the campaign “background noise”. Closing the rolls this far out means that lots of Australians won’t realise they need to enrol to vote until its actually too late.
The worst thing about this law is that it’s completely arbitrary. Voters in NSW can actually enrol to vote on election day itself. Victoria also allows voters to enrol on election day.
Ideally, voters would enrol before election day. But I think it’s ludicrous to prevent them from voting, and potentially fine them, because they didn’t enrol six weeks before the actual election.
The other leaf the federal government could take out of NSW and Victoria’s books is something called “direct enrolment”.
In NSW, the state electoral commission uses driver license data, Board of Studies information and the registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages to automatically enrol voters. The federal government has the ability to do something similar but at the moment it only sources data from a limited range of government databases – Centrelink and the National Exchange of Vehicle and Drive Information System.
The net result, according to Parliamentary Library research commissioned by Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, is a situation where 150,000 NSW residents are registered to vote in state elections but not in federal elections. It’s a ridiculous situation. It’s incredibly unlikely that these 150,000 voters, who voted at the NSW state election in 2015 would be aware that they were ineligible to vote at the federal election just one year later.
The situation is likely to get even worse. According to the Parliamentary Library, disagreements between state and federal electoral commissions over funding and databases is “likely to increase Commonwealth-State roll divergence, which could lead to elector confusion and disenfranchisement”.
Very simply: If someone is enrolled to vote for a state election in Australia they should be eligible to vote for a federal election, without having to complete any additional paperwork. It’s 2016 - we shouldn’t have half a dozen different, competing electoral rolls. The government should resolve to reconcile the differences between the rolls and utilise whatever data it already has available, from federal and state agencies, to enrol voters.
To be clear, I am not calling on the government to undertake some sort of massive data gathering exercise. They simply need to use the information they already have to ensure voters are eligible to vote on polling day.
I think there is always a debate to be had about the merits of compulsory voting. We should regularly interrogate all aspects of our political system to ensure it’s functioning in the most fair, transparent and democratic way possible.
But if we’re going to proudly declare ourselves a nation with compulsory voting laws, and then not do some pretty simple things to ensure that all voters actually have the right to vote on polling day, we’re hypocrites. Yes, ideally voters should enrol themselves. Yes, the issues around political disengagement and apathy are serious and should be discussed. But the current system doesn’t make it as easy as possible for voters to cast a ballot on election day and that’s why it needs to be fixed.
