I chatted with two (separate) friends on the weekend about the election - as the conversation developed, it turned out that neither of them was enrolled to vote. One is 46, the other is 54, so they aren’t the “young people” who we’ve been led to believe are most at risk of being disenfranchised. Both had dropped off the roll because of moving house this year. Australians are now very mobile and although changing addresses is more often a young person’s move, that doesn’t mean older people stay still.
Both my friends have moved quickly to re-enrol this week (as they’re both in Turnbull’s electorate, their vote might make a difference!) It’s worth reminding everyone you know to make sure they’re enrolled - especially the young who might be first-time voters and those who’ve moved house in the past year. Anyone can check their enrolment status here.
Please take a couple of minutes to check your enrolment, via the link provided by suz. You might only have a couple of days left, and there will be no redress on polling day when you turn up and your name is not on the roll.
And remember, the form is a lot more complicated than last time.
You’re going to need a witness and some id.
Do it NOW!
Can someone please tell me: If you have enrolled and moved since the last election, can you at least vote in the electorate in which you were last enrolled in case you miss out on updating your enrolment details?
Seems a partial recourse against Howard’s attempts to screw over non-Lib voters, I would have thought.
Enrolled and ready to vote. Now if only they would call the damn election!
In reply to Sam - yes you can vote as if at your old address unless:
1/it has been reported to AEC by you or new tennent at your old address
2/if AEC have found through a door knock that you have moved (low probability)
And then you would have been removed from the electoral roll.
You can try Sam, but I would not risk it, seriously.
If the new residents at your old address have enrolled then they will appear on the roll not you. Or the AEC might have already door-knocked or posted to your old address and amended the roll accordingly.
You are supposed to change your enrolment within a month of moving. I suggest you get with the program Sam. Silly buggers don’t win against city hall.
“And remember, the form is a lot more complicated than last time. You’re going to need a witness and some id.”
tssk, I think those witness and ID hurdles brought in by the Howard Government to make voting more difficult are only for new enrolments, not re-enrolments.
Changing your enrolled address is still relatively easy.
The aim of these recent ID/witness amendments to the Electoral Act is to try to disenfranchise young first time voters (who might vote the wrong way) by making it all too bothersome, and of course anyone with literacy and language difficulties, like new citizens, and aboriginal people in remote areas like the NT, where finding an appropriate witness and personal identification out in the desert is a sad joke.
Australia Post!!!! AEC & Moving House….
The Electoral Commission now automatically receives notification from Australia Post, if you move house and pay the post persons to have your mail re-directed. The AEC should then send a letter to your NEW address, inviting you to amend your enrolment.
But don’t hang around and wait for it. The AEC letter I’m thinking of was received MANY weeks after the mail re-direction was done.
cheerio
Just checked my enrollment, my wife’s and that of my two sons. All NOT enrolled. Rang the contact number. He said we were enrolled.
He also got on the website as above. We entered the information simultaneously. This time successful.
Explanation: Probable site overload. You might have to keep trying. BTW the Officer at the AEC was very helpful.
Oh I’m enrolled grace - updated at the time of NSW election . Was just wondering how feasible voting at your old address might be as an absolute last-minute recourse for others who might not be as anal as I am about enrolling correctly.
I have dutifully been spreading the word about updating enrolments to all my nomadic inner-city buds, but there’s only so many people you can get the good word out to.
As per your comments Grace
On the form it appeared to us that we had to have ID and have it countersigned even though we were already registered.
In any case it’s all done and checked now.
Ta WPD, check showed not, even though I entered my election enrolment details as per AEC confirmation card with details updated 12 mths ago!
Onya Sam and tssk.
I think the witness requirements have been around since at least 2000 - was definitely required when I moved to around then.
In my experience the AEC are pretty enthusiastic about getting people to enroll when they move - they really don’t like it when there’s a house and no one enrolled at that address (they keep sending enrollment forms).
Watch out for the forms in post offices. Some of them are still old ones. I changed my enrollment only to have it sent back by my darling local returning officer. I got a minister to sign the new one. That worked.
Even easier, just download the form here and print it out.
I LOT of young people don’t even bother to enrol any more. And in my experience, it’s mainly the ones who would vote Labor.
The more feckless and irresponsible someone is, the more often they move house. Why make it easy for them? If they were committed to their electorate, they’d invest in bricks and mortar. Under the old socialist method, anyone could vote, deserving or not.
I’d say after question time today if you haven’t enrolled do so tomorrow!
I’d love to enrol, but have a real issue with the whole public access thing.
I’ve been found once thru the role - admittedly it was a credit collection agency so it is really my own fault, however I’ve also now experienced real identity theft and subsequently I’m not real fond of having my details out in the public domain!
I’ve not voted since 2001, so I’d say I’ve got a few fines out there somewhere too! Very irresponsible, but I’m just don’t do public details anymore!
I’d try the silent option, but I don’t want to have it rejected and end up on the role anyway.
My partner is also reluctant to enrol, but she had an abusive childhood and just plain refuses to enrol at all - never has and doubt that she ever will.
Does anyone have any further info on silent enrolment? Writing this post, has probably motivated me to call and ask the aec tomorrow myself, but any personal experiences from people, I’d love to hear?
I am enrolled… in Griffith. But I’ve been living in Ryan for about 8 months now. The other day I put my form in to change address but the lady at the post office refused to witness it. Would I be committing fraud if I voted in Griffith now? I should be pretty quick about changing my address either way… Kevin Rudd does not need my vote, but the labor candidate in Ryan sure does.
grace pettrigrew said:
According to the form, you can’t actually change your enrolment until you have been at your new place for a month. Luckily, I got to avoid voting in the Queensland election by filling the form out on the day that month was up, which also happened to be the second-last day for the close of rolls.
Suz:
Well, wiping thousands and thousands of potentially inconvenient voters off the electoral rolls as well as getting the graveyard to vote worked to get Mr Bush and Mr Cheney elected and then re-elected so why wouldn’t any scoundrels try the same thing in Australia?
Incidently, when I was in the Army a long time ago, many soldiers were inproperly removed from electoral rolls. We will let you risk your life fighting for democracy but we won’t let you vote.
Grace Pettigrew:
Well, not quite …. but let’s all hope that that sort of “forceful” redress never never happens in Australia.
Harriet Vane, thanks for the correction, yes.
R Con, it is my understanding that silent enrolment requires a very good reason, and you have to establish a case with your Divisional Returning Officer. The electoral roll is an open listing because it allows all of us to be confident that there is no fraud. It has been that way for over a century and is unlikely to change.
Graham Bell, the AEC goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure that soldiers are delivered their vote wherever they are on the planet. Your story of improper disenfranchisement might have happened before the AEC came into existence in 1984. It would not happen now. The AEC is independent of government direction in the performance of its functions, and has a very high reputation internationally for conducting free and fair elections.
grace p,
I am very pleased to find out from you that things changed in 1984. I remember in 1975 that I was removed from the election roll and so was my then wife and so were many of the lefty people whom I knew.This happened without any of us having changed addresses.
At the last election I voted absentee(for the first time) at the St Andrews Cathedral Annexe in Sydney and was surprised that a small committee of electoral officers scrutinised my papers.So much for the secret ballot.
Are you certain that the system is corruption free?
“The AEC is independent of government direction in the performance of its functions, and has a very high reputation internationally for conducting free and fair elections.”
Yes, indeed.
I recall as we watched the “hanging chads” debacle in the Florida section of a recent US Presidential election, thinking - “why don’t they have a national body conducting national elections? why do the procedures vary from Sate to State? why are they so old-fashioned in some aspects of life? why do they still use these clunky ‘voting machines’ if the error rate is so high?
I believe that you can still fill out a ballot and vote if you turn up on polling day but are not on the list of enrolled voters - IF you are entitled to vote, but just aren’t on the physical list because you’ve changed your details recently, or something similar, your vote is counted after your eligibilty has been confirmed. (Sorry, I think it might be called provisional voting or something, and I’m not sure how the procedure works - but I have a feeling that it means that someone who has been incorrectly removed from the roll can vote… I’ll have a look at the legislation from last year later today if I get time.)
dany le roux, whatever happened in 1975 is far beyond my ken. There are many perfectly legal reasons why people are removed from the roll, and we should not always assume that official malfeasance is the cause.
You then say, “At the last election I voted absentee(for the first time) at the St Andrews Cathedral Annexe in Sydney and was surprised that a small committee of electoral officers scrutinised my papers.So much for the secret ballot. Are you certain that the system is corruption free?”
I am not sure what you are saying here. Who do you want looking at your ballot papers if not the AEC electoral officials who have to count them?
But if your concern is about absent voting at federal elections in particular, any declaration vote requires you to declare your personal details on the outside of the envelope so your eligibility to vote can be checked against the electoral roll after polling day, in the divisional office. Declaration envelopes are not opened until this check has been done. Declaration votes that fail this roll check are not opened, and are stored securely in case there is any court challenge later.
If it is confirmed that you are enrolled as you claim, then your declaration envelope joins all other eligible declaration envelopes for that division, and they are all opened in one process, face down, and the ballot papers extracted and thrown into a massed pile for later inclusion in the count. Electoral officials go to great pains to ensure there is no connection made between personal details on the envelopes and the individual marks on the ballot papers. Scrutineers from both major political parties, authorised by the AEC to be in attendance, watch this process closely for any illegality.
You might like to consult the AEC website for further details, or have a chat to your local Divisional Returning Officer if you need any further reassurance.
Kirsty M, you are right that provisional votes are available if you turn up at a polling booth and your name is not on the roll. Your ballot papers are enclosed in a declaration envelope, with your personal details on the front, and those details are checked later against the roll to determine eligibility. If you found not to be enrolled where you claim you are enrolled, then your ballot papers are not entered into the count.
That is, if you do not get your enrolment right to begin with, a provisional declaration will not save your vote.
To others who have similar concerns, your local Divisional Officer will be more than pleased to assist you. Assuming you know the division in which you are enrolled, the Australian Electoral Commission offices are listed in the phone book.
grace p,
I do not remember seeing an envelope.Are you talking about postal or absentee votes?
dany le roux, the term “declaration vote” is used to cover a number of different forms of voting, including postal, absent and provisional.
What they have in common is that the ballot papers are put into an envelope with your personal details declared on the front, and your declaration of eligibility is checked against the roll later, before the envelope is opened and your ballot papers included in the count.
That is, if you voted “absentee”, as you said in your earlier post, then you would have cast a declaration vote, in an envelope. An absent vote is given to anyone who turns up at a polling booth in another division from the division in which they are enrolled, within the state.
On the other hand, if you put your ballot papers directly into the ballot box at the polling booth, then you would have cast an “ordinary vote” in and for your home division, like most other voters.
My confirmation failed, too, but it was because I specified my street name with the word ‘Street’ in it, instead of / in addition to selecting a street type. Since it could find ‘x Street Street’, it returned an error. Entering the details according to the format returned a valid confirmation.
It’s one way of ensuring a consistent spelling, I suppose.
Grace Pettigrew:
Nowadays, the AEC and the ADF do indeed try to make sure everyone on defence/military service can carry out their duty to vote.
These days, when so many of out traditional rights, obligations and privileges have been destroyed or maimed, that makes a good place to start.
In my own experience and observation of AEC staff at a local level in various places, they have always been extraordinarily patient, helpful, honest and dedicated. That’s at a local level. Wonder what happens when you get into the Corridors Of Power though?