Michael McCormack slams voters as informal ballots rise during federal election result count

Australia Broadcast Center

06-05-2025

Former deputy prime minister Michael McCormack has criticised constituents after a sharp increase in informal votes in his rural New South Wales electorate.
So far 11,054 informal votes have been recorded in the division of Riverina, where more than 85 per cent of the vote counted.
The informal ballots account for about 10 per cent of the votes counted.
In 2022, the electorate recorded 7,794 informal votes, or 7.32 per cent.
Nationally 749,809 informal votes have been counted, which equates to 5.27 per cent of the voter turnout.
That is slightly higher than during the 2022 election and equal to the 2019 poll.
There is a similarly high informal vote of 10.2 per cent in Parkes, which neighbours the Riverina, and 8.4 per cent in Farrer.
Mr McCormack said the figures were "shameful" and suggested voters who wasted their ballot should not complain if things did not go their way.
"There are 103,000 names on the Roll of Honour at the war memorial so that people could get a free and fair vote," the Riverina MP said.
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Anybody who wastes their vote, you know, needs to take a good, long, hard look at themselves.
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Michael McCormack says informal voters should hold their tongues if they don't like the outcome.
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ABC News
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Mr McCormack called for the federal system to be made similar to local and state polls, in which voters only need to indicate their preferred candidate.
"You can turn up to a state election and just put a one and your vote counts … then you have to number every box in the federal election," he said.
"I think that's madness."
Confused voters
Charles Sturt University political scientist Dominic O'Sullivan said the high rate of informal voting was worrying.
The Riverina electorate had 13 lower house candidates – the equal-highest nationally – and he said such a "large number" was known to confuse voters.
"We all know who we don't like, but we don't necessarily give a lot of thought to who we like the least of the ones that we really don't want anywhere near the parliament," Professor O'Sullivan told
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Sometimes voters find that confusing and that can lead to spoiled ballot papers.
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Professor O'Sullivan says more candidates tend to lead to more informal votes.
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Supplied: Charles Sturt University
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Professor O'Sullivan said protest voting was also an issue but suggested some may be casting an invalid vote because they did not understand the system.
An Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) spokesperson said the informal vote statistics were "only accurate at this point in time".
"The fresh scrutiny process that begins [on Wednesday] is a mandatory second count of all ballot papers that will identify some that were set aside as informal in the first count but actually met the formality rules and will be admitted to the count," they said.
"Research shows that the more candidates there are in a contest, the higher the informality rate tends to be."