Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Electoral systems
However, individuals suspected of casting a blank ballot paper could be
required to confess to deliberately abstaining from voting and be penalised accordingly
under the Act. 9 For instance, the Act requires the electoral commissioner to
prepare a list of names of eligible voters who have not voted in a federal election; it
is not far-fetched to imagine the AEC identifying individuals who confess on social
media to deliberately casting a blank or otherwise informal ballot.
As of 2019, the AEC has shown little appetite for such proactive penalisation.
Prior to the 2010 Australian federal election, former Labor leader Mark Latham
publicly announced that he would be casting a blank ballot and urged others to do
likewise. 10 The AEC told media outlets reporting on these comments that Latham
did not contravene the Act, either by casting a blank ballot himself or by telling
others that he would do so.
The second means of abstaining is to not enrol to vote. Electoral enrolment is
compulsory under the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. TheActmandatesthat
eligible voters must register themselves as voters with the AEC and maintain their
enrolment by advising the AEC any time they change their residential address.
Since 2012, the AEC has had legislative power to ‘directly update’ the electoral roll.
This allows the AEC to identify eligible voters using data from other federal and
state government agencies – vehicle registration and driver licencing authorities,
welfare agencies and utility providers, for example – and automatically add them
to the electoral roll. The AEC notifies all individuals who are automatically added
totheroll,andtheseindividualshave28daysinwhichtoobject(althoughthere
are almost no grounds for valid objection, besides the individual’s details being
incorrect).
These new powers have diminished Australians’ ability to ‘hide’ from the AEC
– and from having to vote in elections – by never enrolling to vote. Eligible voters
who are directly added to the roll are not fined for having abstained previously. In
2018, 96 per cent of eligible Australians were enrolled to vote. In 2011, before the
direct update legislation was introduced, only 91 per cent of eligible Australians
were enrolled. Among eligible young Australians (those aged 18 to 25), enrolment
has increased from 73 per cent in 2011 to 85 per cent in 2018. Direct updating
reversed a trend of declining voter enrolments generally, but particularly among
young Australians. At the beginning of 2019, approximately two-thirds of all
electoral enrolment in Australia occurs via direct update of the roll.
Majoritarian and consensual electoral systems
There are many common ways of categorising and describing electoral systems,
but most approaches identify three broad types based on the type of government
9 Twomey 1996, 210.
10 Pringle 2012.
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