The number of informal votes in the federal election last week has shown many ethnic voters are not being given the right kind of help with casting a vote.
High numbers of informal votes came from some of the most diverse areas of the country, showing that many were left without appropriate help to make sure their vote was valid.
Informal votes jumped to 5.9 per cent this election, a .5 per cent rise from the last federal election in 2010.
A vote is counted as informal if it is not marked at all or if it is filled out incorrectly. It can also be counted as informal if the ballot paper has writing on it that identifies the voter.
The AEC provides a ‘How to Vote Guide’ to each polling station that gives voters direction on how to vote correctly in many languages.
Working on Election Day, I was posted at the Melbourne electorate, and was never made aware as to where the guide was by the officers in charge.
There were many cases where voters with minimal English skills were given ballot papers with blank looks on their faces.
As a Greek speaker, I was able to help members of the Greek community and even assisted an illiterate Greek voter to cast their vote.
But there were many who were left without that assistance. As many of the polling staff, including me, were only hired for the day, these issues would have been widespread in the race to get the lines shorter.
Overall, 710,000 votes were not recorded in this election thanks to mistakes or blank votes cast.
Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull, who is expected to be named Minister for Communications and Broadband, says electronic voting could help reduce the high number of informal ballots in Australian elections.
“If you misnumbered your boxes, the application would say: ‘You haven’t filled in your form correctly, it’s an informal vote. Do you wish to cast an informal vote?’,” he said.
“If you said, yes … that’s your choice, but most people would… fill it in correctly.”
“I think that would make a huge difference to the House of Representatives’ elections.”
If electronic voting – either in a localised or remote set up – was to be introduced at the federal level, a change to the Electoral Act would be required.
The AEC has been monitoring electronic voting technologies for more than 10 years. The 2007 federal election included electronic voting trials for vision-impaired voters and for ADF and AFP personnel who were overseas and the AEC is expected to soon release a discussion paper on internet voting, to help public debate on the issue.
The most informal votes cast at a Federal Election was in 1984, at 6.34 per cent.
Source: The Age, AEC, ABC