Ordinary Australians may be giving up on politics

In the heart of Melbourne – Melbourne CBD, Parkville, Moonee Valley, Kensington, North Melbourne, Carlton, Flemington – the large proportion of electors stopped voting and amongst those that did a high proportion deliberately voted informally.

On 21 July 2012 the electors of Melbourne District were called to the pols. As in all parts of Australia, voting is compulsory in State elections.

Of the 44,889 individuals enrolled at the close of the rolls, 30,803 voted [68.62%]; 2,878 individuals registered an informal vote [6.41%].

So 62.21%, or less than two thirds of the enrolled electors, elected their representative in a compulsory voting system.

I wondered how systemic this trend was, and whether by-elections correlated with higher levels of apathy, ignorance or voter indifference than seen at general elections.
The answer is probably yes.

In the Victorian general election in 2010 the turnout in this seat increased to 86.93% and the lower turn out in by-elections was repeated in another Victorian seat; the seat of Niddrie. At the by-election on 24 March 2012 84.81% bothered voting; compared to 93.61% at the state election.

What’s happening in other States?

Let’s look at New South Wales:

When Clover Moore was forced to resign as member for the inner city seat of Sydney a by-election was held on 27 October 2012. Of the 61,328 individuals enrolled at the close of that poll, only 28,357 voted [44.75%]. A whopping 53.84% of eligible voters didn’t vote. And it wasn’t much better in the NSW general election in 2011; only 58.83% voted!

Tasmania’s participation rate is rather good in the circumstances and we don’t have House of Assemble by-elections within the term of the Parliament. In the five Tasmanian elections since 1996 roughly 95% of eligible voters bother and around 5% vote informally (either accidentally or deliberately).

The rate which eligible voters are deliberately invalidating their ballots is trending up across State and federal jurisdictions. All state Electoral Commissions provide statistics on the informal voting trend and classify these invalid votes according to whether they are:

• Blank ballots
• Deliberated defaced or scribbled over
• The elector declared themselves on the ballot paper
• [b]Only[/b] the first preference vote is declared, no other boxes numbered
• [b]No[/b] first preference is declared
• Ticks or crosses used

Voter apathy to top-down democracy is increasing and just prior to the recent Western Australian state election the Electoral Commissioner urged the estimated 240,000 unregistered Western Australians to register to vote.

According to [b]Antony Green[/b], Australian elections impose three compulsions on voters. The first is compulsory enrolment; second is compulsory voting, or more precisely compulsory attendance and acceptance of a ballot paper and third at Commonwealth elections (but not NSW, Queensland, Tasmanian and ACT elections) is compulsory preferential voting.

http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2011/09/should-people-be-prosecuted-if-they-wont-enrol-to-vote.html

Yes, it seems continuous or automatic roll updates are now used to increase voter registration based on their date of birth and name.

Compulsion works on the majority… but clearly voter indifference to politics and perhaps the behaviour of politicians is now centre-stage.