Disaffection, Non-Voting and Informal Voting

By Mike Head

A third feature of the election was the deepening alienation of broad layers of the population, particularly young people, from the political system as a whole. This hostility has been expressed increasingly in every Australian election over the past two decades.

This year, some 5.1 percent of enrolled voters, or nearly 600,000 people, cast "informal" votes—they either spoiled their ballot papers, refused to give preferences to every candidate or otherwise failed to satisfy the electoral rules. Over the past four federal elections, the proportion of informal votes has almost doubled from 3 percent in 1993.

The highest informal voting rates—up to 11.2 percent— were recorded in Labor and former Labor-held working class electorates across Sydney’s western suburbs. A dozen seats registered informal votes of around 10 percent. The sharpest rise, from 6.8 to 10.9 percent, occurred in Greenway—another expression of the disenchantment that lay behind the seat being won by a Liberal candidate for the first time.

Electoral enrolment and voting are compulsory for all Australian citizens over the age of 18. Those who refuse can be fined and, if they do not pay the fine, jailed. Even so, another 650,000 people did not vote at all. In addition, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) estimates that a further 675,000 people are not enrolled.

If these figures are added to the "informal" vote, nearly two million adults, or close to a fifth of the eligible population, failed or refused to vote. By all the available evidence, they are mostly working people, the jobless and the young. According to Centrelink data cited in a 2002 Australian National Audit Office report on electoral enrolment, 2.5 million adults receiving social security payments are not enrolled. (This will include immigrants and refugees who are not entitled to citizenship, and thus are denied the right to vote.)

The AEC and the Audit Office calculate that about onethird of those not enrolled are young people who have never enrolled, while another third have been struck off the roll because they no longer live at their registered address. The proportion of young people failing to enrol has continued to rise in recent years despite various "Rock Enrol" concerts and promotions organised by the AEC in conjunction with rock music radio stations.

The AEC has become so perplexed by this trend that earlier this year it announced a four-year "Youth Electoral Study" to "explore why many are not enrolling to vote and how best to encourage them to become more active democratic citizens". Electoral Commissioner Andy Becker said the study was addressing an important issue not only in Australia but increasingly worldwide. "We have known for many years that the younger you are, the less likely you are to be correctly enrolled, but we haven’t known much about why," he said.

There is no real mystery here. Growing numbers of young people have no confidence in the political or economic system. There are signs of a growing politicisation among the youth, but not in the direction of the old parties. Many joined the global marches last year against the looming Iraq war only to have their voices ignored. Regardless of whether Liberal or Labor is in office, they face a future dominated by militarism and war, coupled with deteriorating school conditions, soaring costs for higher education, and increasingly insecure, casualised and low-paid work.

An extract from a comprehensive article published in The World Socialist Web Site, 25 October, 2004