This systemic problem in our federal elections is not being adequately addressed, and it's growing

The Advertiser

6 days ago

After every election, Parliament's powerful electoral matters committee reviews that election.
This time, it must be a top priority to deal with the rising number of votes that are struck out as informal.
People absolutely have the right to choose "none of the above" when they step into the polling booth, but there are just as many, if not more, who are attempting - and failing - to exercise their precious democratic right.
We need to do far more to make sure the rules are simple, consistent and clear.
That responsibility rests with everyone from schools, to the media, citizenship preparation courses, the political parties and the Australian Electoral Commission.
Why is nobody upset that an extraordinary 18,274 voters had their ballots excluded from the May election count in just one electorate - the south-western Sydney seat of Werriwa?
It was the highest number and greatest percentage of informal votes in any of the 150 electorates contested at the federal election.
Yet there is no outrage that 17.26 per cent of the voters in a marginal seat were not heard.
It was double the rate from the previous election and the number of ballot papers rejected was far greater than the eventual winning margin of 11,870 for Labor's Anne Stanley.
In some individual polling places in Werriwa more than one-in-four votes were struck out. In Ashcroft it was 28 per cent.
Werriwa was the worst, but it was by no means the exception. In a staggering 20 seats, the informal vote was larger than the winning margin.
Nationwide, almost 920,000 votes were excluded from the count.
In the nail-bitingly tight seat of Bradfield in Sydney's north, won by Nicolette Boele by 26 votes, there were 6656 informal votes.
In the Victorian seat of Goldstein, where Liberal Tim Wilson wrestled the seat from teal independent Zoe Daniel, the informal vote was 18 times higher than the winning margin of 175 votes.
Even in the ACT seat of Bean, where Labor's David Smith got a massive scare from independent candidate Jessie Price and prevailed by only 700 votes, more than three times as many votes, 2670, were ruled informal.
And in the south-western Sydney seat of Fowler, which was hotly contested between Independent Dai Le and Labor's Tu Le, the informal vote rose by 3.4 per cent with 15,079 ballots struck out in a seat where the margin was 4974 votes. More people voted informally than for the Liberal candidate.
In 11 seats, more than one-in-10 votes were ruled informal, and across the nation, it was 5.6 per cent of all votes cast, which is the highest since 2013.
And that doesn't include the 1.7 million people who were enrolled and didn't turn up to vote on the day, early or at all.
Based on past trends, and it will vary for every electorate, about 40 per cent of people choose "none of the above".
About half of this cohort deliberately left their ballot paper blank.
The other half marked the ballot paper in some way, such as writing slogans, adding candidate names such as Donald Duck or Donald Trump or drawing genitals. There's always someone who writes their own name on the ballot paper.
But that leaves a large group who tried to vote properly yet are not being heard, and are still most likely unaware their vote is not being counted.
The Electoral Commission instructs staff to assume the voter intended to cast a formal ballot, and it will allow votes where numbers are crossed out or over-written as long as the "intent" of the voter is clear.
In the election, there were some suspiciously high informal voting rates in hospitals and aged care homes, while in one small northern NSW booth, electoral officials inexplicably gave people the wrong advice.
These are exceptions that can be fixed, but there is a systemic problem that is not being adequately addressed.
It is no accident that NSW has 19 of the top 20 electorates for informal votes in the House of Representatives.
In a NSW state election, you can simply put the number 1 next to the candidate you want and not mark any other boxes.
In a federal election, you must number every box without repeating or missing a number.
Former Nationals leader Michael McCormack, who holds the seat of Riverina, which had 13,443 informal votes, says it is "madness" that federal, state and local government voting systems are different.
And he is not the only one calling for a rethink.
Regardless of whether we have a compulsory or optional system to number every box on the ballot paper, this is a situation that must no longer be tolerated.
Many high-profile independent candidates also unwittingly contributed to the problem by handing out how-to-vote cards that had the number 1 next to their name and the other boxes left blank.
Electorates with a high proportion of citizens born overseas have high levels of informal voting.
The Electoral Commission knows this and says it "ran a significant communications campaign" translated into more than 30 languages and had information at every polling venue.
The informal vote in most of these areas is rising, so it's not working.
And too many votes are knocked out because voters simply make a mistake in sequentially numbering each box by either repeating a number or missing one.
There's a whole other debate about people reaching the age of 18 who have poor literacy and numeracy that leaves them unable to complete a ballot paper.
If this growing problem is not tackled, we're on a trajectory to have one million informal votes at the next election, with the majority of those cast by people who intended to have their voice heard.
Surely, we can do better to make sure every vote counts.
After every election, Parliament's powerful electoral matters committee reviews that election.
This time, it must be a top priority to deal with the rising number of votes that are struck out as informal.
People absolutely have the right to choose "none of the above" when they step into the polling booth, but there are just as many, if not more, who are attempting - and failing - to exercise their precious democratic right.
We need to do far more to make sure the rules are simple, consistent and clear.
That responsibility rests with everyone from schools, to the media, citizenship preparation courses, the political parties and the Australian Electoral Commission.
Why is nobody upset that an extraordinary 18,274 voters had their ballots excluded from the May election count in just one electorate - the south-western Sydney seat of Werriwa?
It was the highest number and greatest percentage of informal votes in any of the 150 electorates contested at the federal election.
Yet there is no outrage that 17.26 per cent of the voters in a marginal seat were not heard.
It was double the rate from the previous election and the number of ballot papers rejected was far greater than the eventual winning margin of 11,870 for Labor's Anne Stanley.
In some individual polling places in Werriwa more than one-in-four votes were struck out. In Ashcroft it was 28 per cent.
Werriwa was the worst, but it was by no means the exception. In a staggering 20 seats, the informal vote was larger than the winning margin.
Nationwide, almost 920,000 votes were excluded from the count.
In the nail-bitingly tight seat of Bradfield in Sydney's north, won by Nicolette Boele by 26 votes, there were 6656 informal votes.
In the Victorian seat of Goldstein, where Liberal Tim Wilson wrestled the seat from teal independent Zoe Daniel, the informal vote was 18 times higher than the winning margin of 175 votes.
Even in the ACT seat of Bean, where Labor's David Smith got a massive scare from independent candidate Jessie Price and prevailed by only 700 votes, more than three times as many votes, 2670, were ruled informal.
And in the south-western Sydney seat of Fowler, which was hotly contested between Independent Dai Le and Labor's Tu Le, the informal vote rose by 3.4 per cent with 15,079 ballots struck out in a seat where the margin was 4974 votes. More people voted informally than for the Liberal candidate.
In 11 seats, more than one-in-10 votes were ruled informal, and across the nation, it was 5.6 per cent of all votes cast, which is the highest since 2013.
And that doesn't include the 1.7 million people who were enrolled and didn't turn up to vote on the day, early or at all.
Based on past trends, and it will vary for every electorate, about 40 per cent of people choose "none of the above".
About half of this cohort deliberately left their ballot paper blank.
The other half marked the ballot paper in some way, such as writing slogans, adding candidate names such as Donald Duck or Donald Trump or drawing genitals. There's always someone who writes their own name on the ballot paper.
But that leaves a large group who tried to vote properly yet are not being heard, and are still most likely unaware their vote is not being counted.
The Electoral Commission instructs staff to assume the voter intended to cast a formal ballot, and it will allow votes where numbers are crossed out or over-written as long as the "intent" of the voter is clear.
In the election, there were some suspiciously high informal voting rates in hospitals and aged care homes, while in one small northern NSW booth, electoral officials inexplicably gave people the wrong advice.
These are exceptions that can be fixed, but there is a systemic problem that is not being adequately addressed.
It is no accident that NSW has 19 of the top 20 electorates for informal votes in the House of Representatives.
In a NSW state election, you can simply put the number 1 next to the candidate you want and not mark any other boxes.
In a federal election, you must number every box without repeating or missing a number.
Former Nationals leader Michael McCormack, who holds the seat of Riverina, which had 13,443 informal votes, says it is "madness" that federal, state and local government voting systems are different.
And he is not the only one calling for a rethink.
Regardless of whether we have a compulsory or optional system to number every box on the ballot paper, this is a situation that must no longer be tolerated.
Many high-profile independent candidates also unwittingly contributed to the problem by handing out how-to-vote cards that had the number 1 next to their name and the other boxes left blank.
Electorates with a high proportion of citizens born overseas have high levels of informal voting.
The Electoral Commission knows this and says it "ran a significant communications campaign" translated into more than 30 languages and had information at every polling venue.
The informal vote in most of these areas is rising, so it's not working.
And too many votes are knocked out because voters simply make a mistake in sequentially numbering each box by either repeating a number or missing one.
There's a whole other debate about people reaching the age of 18 who have poor literacy and numeracy that leaves them unable to complete a ballot paper.
If this growing problem is not tackled, we're on a trajectory to have one million informal votes at the next election, with the majority of those cast by people who intended to have their voice heard.
Surely, we can do better to make sure every vote counts.
After every election, Parliament's powerful electoral matters committee reviews that election.
This time, it must be a top priority to deal with the rising number of votes that are struck out as informal.
People absolutely have the right to choose "none of the above" when they step into the polling booth, but there are just as many, if not more, who are attempting - and failing - to exercise their precious democratic right.
We need to do far more to make sure the rules are simple, consistent and clear.
That responsibility rests with everyone from schools, to the media, citizenship preparation courses, the political parties and the Australian Electoral Commission.
Why is nobody upset that an extraordinary 18,274 voters had their ballots excluded from the May election count in just one electorate - the south-western Sydney seat of Werriwa?
It was the highest number and greatest percentage of informal votes in any of the 150 electorates contested at the federal election.
Yet there is no outrage that 17.26 per cent of the voters in a marginal seat were not heard.
It was double the rate from the previous election and the number of ballot papers rejected was far greater than the eventual winning margin of 11,870 for Labor's Anne Stanley.
In some individual polling places in Werriwa more than one-in-four votes were struck out. In Ashcroft it was 28 per cent.
Werriwa was the worst, but it was by no means the exception. In a staggering 20 seats, the informal vote was larger than the winning margin.
Nationwide, almost 920,000 votes were excluded from the count.
In the nail-bitingly tight seat of Bradfield in Sydney's north, won by Nicolette Boele by 26 votes, there were 6656 informal votes.
In the Victorian seat of Goldstein, where Liberal Tim Wilson wrestled the seat from teal independent Zoe Daniel, the informal vote was 18 times higher than the winning margin of 175 votes.
Even in the ACT seat of Bean, where Labor's David Smith got a massive scare from independent candidate Jessie Price and prevailed by only 700 votes, more than three times as many votes, 2670, were ruled informal.
And in the south-western Sydney seat of Fowler, which was hotly contested between Independent Dai Le and Labor's Tu Le, the informal vote rose by 3.4 per cent with 15,079 ballots struck out in a seat where the margin was 4974 votes. More people voted informally than for the Liberal candidate.
In 11 seats, more than one-in-10 votes were ruled informal, and across the nation, it was 5.6 per cent of all votes cast, which is the highest since 2013.
And that doesn't include the 1.7 million people who were enrolled and didn't turn up to vote on the day, early or at all.
Based on past trends, and it will vary for every electorate, about 40 per cent of people choose "none of the above".
About half of this cohort deliberately left their ballot paper blank.
The other half marked the ballot paper in some way, such as writing slogans, adding candidate names such as Donald Duck or Donald Trump or drawing genitals. There's always someone who writes their own name on the ballot paper.
But that leaves a large group who tried to vote properly yet are not being heard, and are still most likely unaware their vote is not being counted.
The Electoral Commission instructs staff to assume the voter intended to cast a formal ballot, and it will allow votes where numbers are crossed out or over-written as long as the "intent" of the voter is clear.
In the election, there were some suspiciously high informal voting rates in hospitals and aged care homes, while in one small northern NSW booth, electoral officials inexplicably gave people the wrong advice.
These are exceptions that can be fixed, but there is a systemic problem that is not being adequately addressed.
It is no accident that NSW has 19 of the top 20 electorates for informal votes in the House of Representatives.
In a NSW state election, you can simply put the number 1 next to the candidate you want and not mark any other boxes.
In a federal election, you must number every box without repeating or missing a number.
Former Nationals leader Michael McCormack, who holds the seat of Riverina, which had 13,443 informal votes, says it is "madness" that federal, state and local government voting systems are different.
And he is not the only one calling for a rethink.
Regardless of whether we have a compulsory or optional system to number every box on the ballot paper, this is a situation that must no longer be tolerated.
Many high-profile independent candidates also unwittingly contributed to the problem by handing out how-to-vote cards that had the number 1 next to their name and the other boxes left blank.
Electorates with a high proportion of citizens born overseas have high levels of informal voting.
The Electoral Commission knows this and says it "ran a significant communications campaign" translated into more than 30 languages and had information at every polling venue.
The informal vote in most of these areas is rising, so it's not working.
And too many votes are knocked out because voters simply make a mistake in sequentially numbering each box by either repeating a number or missing one.
There's a whole other debate about people reaching the age of 18 who have poor literacy and numeracy that leaves them unable to complete a ballot paper.
If this growing problem is not tackled, we're on a trajectory to have one million informal votes at the next election, with the majority of those cast by people who intended to have their voice heard.
Surely, we can do better to make sure every vote counts.
After every election, Parliament's powerful electoral matters committee reviews that election.
This time, it must be a top priority to deal with the rising number of votes that are struck out as informal.
People absolutely have the right to choose "none of the above" when they step into the polling booth, but there are just as many, if not more, who are attempting - and failing - to exercise their precious democratic right.
We need to do far more to make sure the rules are simple, consistent and clear.
That responsibility rests with everyone from schools, to the media, citizenship preparation courses, the political parties and the Australian Electoral Commission.
Why is nobody upset that an extraordinary 18,274 voters had their ballots excluded from the May election count in just one electorate - the south-western Sydney seat of Werriwa?
It was the highest number and greatest percentage of informal votes in any of the 150 electorates contested at the federal election.
Yet there is no outrage that 17.26 per cent of the voters in a marginal seat were not heard.
It was double the rate from the previous election and the number of ballot papers rejected was far greater than the eventual winning margin of 11,870 for Labor's Anne Stanley.
In some individual polling places in Werriwa more than one-in-four votes were struck out. In Ashcroft it was 28 per cent.
Werriwa was the worst, but it was by no means the exception. In a staggering 20 seats, the informal vote was larger than the winning margin.
Nationwide, almost 920,000 votes were excluded from the count.
In the nail-bitingly tight seat of Bradfield in Sydney's north, won by Nicolette Boele by 26 votes, there were 6656 informal votes.
In the Victorian seat of Goldstein, where Liberal Tim Wilson wrestled the seat from teal independent Zoe Daniel, the informal vote was 18 times higher than the winning margin of 175 votes.
Even in the ACT seat of Bean, where Labor's David Smith got a massive scare from independent candidate Jessie Price and prevailed by only 700 votes, more than three times as many votes, 2670, were ruled informal.
And in the south-western Sydney seat of Fowler, which was hotly contested between Independent Dai Le and Labor's Tu Le, the informal vote rose by 3.4 per cent with 15,079 ballots struck out in a seat where the margin was 4974 votes. More people voted informally than for the Liberal candidate.
In 11 seats, more than one-in-10 votes were ruled informal, and across the nation, it was 5.6 per cent of all votes cast, which is the highest since 2013.
And that doesn't include the 1.7 million people who were enrolled and didn't turn up to vote on the day, early or at all.
Based on past trends, and it will vary for every electorate, about 40 per cent of people choose "none of the above".
About half of this cohort deliberately left their ballot paper blank.
The other half marked the ballot paper in some way, such as writing slogans, adding candidate names such as Donald Duck or Donald Trump or drawing genitals. There's always someone who writes their own name on the ballot paper.
But that leaves a large group who tried to vote properly yet are not being heard, and are still most likely unaware their vote is not being counted.
The Electoral Commission instructs staff to assume the voter intended to cast a formal ballot, and it will allow votes where numbers are crossed out or over-written as long as the "intent" of the voter is clear.
In the election, there were some suspiciously high informal voting rates in hospitals and aged care homes, while in one small northern NSW booth, electoral officials inexplicably gave people the wrong advice.
These are exceptions that can be fixed, but there is a systemic problem that is not being adequately addressed.
It is no accident that NSW has 19 of the top 20 electorates for informal votes in the House of Representatives.
In a NSW state election, you can simply put the number 1 next to the candidate you want and not mark any other boxes.
In a federal election, you must number every box without repeating or missing a number.
Former Nationals leader Michael McCormack, who holds the seat of Riverina, which had 13,443 informal votes, says it is "madness" that federal, state and local government voting systems are different.
And he is not the only one calling for a rethink.
Regardless of whether we have a compulsory or optional system to number every box on the ballot paper, this is a situation that must no longer be tolerated.
Many high-profile independent candidates also unwittingly contributed to the problem by handing out how-to-vote cards that had the number 1 next to their name and the other boxes left blank.
Electorates with a high proportion of citizens born overseas have high levels of informal voting.
The Electoral Commission knows this and says it "ran a significant communications campaign" translated into more than 30 languages and had information at every polling venue.
The informal vote in most of these areas is rising, so it's not working.
And too many votes are knocked out because voters simply make a mistake in sequentially numbering each box by either repeating a number or missing one.
There's a whole other debate about people reaching the age of 18 who have poor literacy and numeracy that leaves them unable to complete a ballot paper.
If this growing problem is not tackled, we're on a trajectory to have one million informal votes at the next election, with the majority of those cast by people who intended to have their voice heard.
Surely, we can do better to make sure every vote counts.