Societal Reform
Voting
Australia's voting system is largely good, so all I would suggest
are some tweaks.
Age of Voting
I would lower the earliest voting age to 16. I would also make
voting between the ages of 16 to 20 non-compulsory. That should give
one (or two) Federal elections where a young person would have the
choice of whether to vote or not - I would use that opportunity to
educate and encourage them to do so.
I would also make voting over the age of 75 non-compulsory. I am not
trying to disenfranchise the elderly - far from it - just giving
them a choice. They have contributed to Australia over the last 60+
years, we don't need to demand more from them. I would still urge
them to participate in the democratic process, to vote - but only if
they want to.
Voting
While in person voting on polling day is a great experience -
democracy in action - it always seems to me to be open to the
potential of a devious person putting in multiple votes. A person
could roll up at multiple polling booths in the electorate and get
the chosen name of the person they are impersonating marked off on
the paper voting roll. At present in Australia there is no check of
their identity, it is an honour system. A person can then vote - at
each polling booth they go to. Post election it can be (and will be)
found out that a person claiming to be the person of the chosen name
has voted multiple times but by that time the votes are already in
and can't be identified to be retrieved and removed from the count.
There would probably be a police investigation but how are they
going to find the person that submitted the multiple votes?
It is a tribute to Australians and our political parties that there
is apparently (though I have not seen the figures to confirm this)
little voter fraud. However perhaps some tweaking would still be
worthwhile to make sure this remains the case.
There should at least be an electronic voter roll to be marked off -
this is the 21st century after all! Just on environmental grounds it
would save printing the voter roll, thus saving a large amount of
paper. With an electronic roll the computer would ping anytime it
was detected that a voter was trying to submit a vote under a name
that has already been used for voting for that election. The second
and subsequent person trying to vote under a name would have to
prove that they are who they say they are before their vote was
accepted - or put in a ballot in an envelop (like a postal ballot on
the spot), which is kept separate until the identity issue is
resolved. That is a partial solution, as if it is the first vote
that is fraudulent there would be no way of extracting that
fraudulent vote from the other submitted legitimate votes. A
solution to this issue would be video recording of the voter getting
their name marked off the voting role in the polling booth, but of
course not of them voting. That way it would be easy to go back and
check whether it was the same person getting their name marked off
at the different polling booths. (Face coverings, sun glasses banned
while getting marked off.) Intrusion of liberty? Not really. The
voting authority (AEC) already know the voter was there by their
name mark off. The video is telling nothing new. The AEC would have
to ensure that the videos were erased once the poll was declared and
no longer needed for recount or challenge ensuring it could not be
used for any other purpose. (What - you're paranoid about
the Government getting a photo database of the population. Sorry to
tell you this - they would already have a largely complete database
with photos on driver's licenses and passports. But there would need
to be specific regulations banning this use.)
The next level is that everyone has to prove who they are prior to
voting. So driver's license or other photo identity card. I know
identity cards have been problematic in the past - so this
requirement should only be considered if it was determined that
there was a significant problem with voter fraud in the future that
needed to be fixed. That is not the case at present.
An alternative is to go to a complete mail in system or a system
where the person completes the voting ballots at home before mailing
it in or dropping it off at a polling place. The voting slip
is put into an envelop which does not identify the voter. This
envelop is then put into a second envelop, which has been
preregistered to the voter, signed by the voter and submitted. This
allows all attempts at multiple voting under a single voters name to
be detected before the vote is accepted into the count and those
votes set aside to be investigated to determine which is the
legitimate vote - probably by signature matching. The legitimate
vote (still contained in the unopened first envelop) is then
included in the count and the illegitimate attempt sent to the
police to investigate. It would slow down the process of vote
counting as there is this additional step in the process so the
result of the election would not be known on election night.
I suggest the use electronic scanning and character recognition
software for paper votes to count the votes. It is a mature
technology that is used widely in other settings and would speed the
counting process while maintaining the added security of having the
original paper vote available if a recount was necessary for any
reason. A manual count could be done for the seats that are close to
confirm the accuracy of the scanned count. And also for any
electorate where the swing varies the most from the average. And
maybe another couple of seats chosen at random - just as a check on
the integrity of the scanned count.
In the future there may be a secure way of remote electronic voting
(over the internet - perhaps using blockchain technology?) so I
wouldn't discount that possibility. The trouble with electronic
voting is that if the votes or voting process is in some way
compromised there may be no opportunity for a recount as there is
with paper based voting. The possibility of something going wrong,
accidentally or maliciously, and the ability to recover from that
would need to be considered in any proposed set up of electronic
voting.
Also see the suggested changes to the
voting system for the Senate from the Political Reform page.
Australian Electoral Commission
(added June 2021, updated March 2023)
The AEC is central to the integrity of our political system. It is
highly respected and one of the most loved institutions in
Australia. However from my brief perusal of the Australian
Constitution document it does not mention it. The AEC is governed by
and administers the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. As a
consequence of this it would be possible for a political party to
abolish some or all of the powers of the AEC. While this is
unthinkable in the present climate who knows what the future holds.
A Trump like candidate could arise with a large majority and have no
compunction about doing this if it cemented their power. One would
hope that if this did happen that the Australian people would rise
up and storm the barricades. But they may not - look at what
happened (or more precisely didn't happen) when Gough
Whitlam was sacked, there where only words of outrage and very
little else. (Not even a High Court challenge - which was very
strange.) It was unthinkable at that time that the Queen's
representative could do this.
To ensure that it can't happen the AEC should be embedded into the
Constitution at the next available opportunity (when other changes
to the constitution are being voted on by the people). It is not
safe to assume that "she'll be right" with such an important
institution.
Voter Education
I would also like to see the AEC given sufficient funding to carry
out more voter education than they do at present - through an
advertising program and in school education. The current ignorance
of some people on voting is regrettable and needs to be addressed to
ensure better functioning of the voting system and democracy. Some
people do not understand how preferential voting operates (no you
don't have to follow the Party's how to vote cards for your vote to
be valid). If people understand how preferential voting operate they
will realise that giving a minor party - the party that may best
represent their views - their first preference is not a waste of
their vote. The full value of their vote will flow on to their
second preference if their first preference does not get sufficient
votes to remain in the contest. And will even flow onto the third
preference etc. if the second preference does not get sufficient
votes. (Again the requirement to use preferential voting should be
embedded in the constitution to ensure it can't be changed by a
political party who think that not having preferential voting would
be of benefit their party. It could happen. After all the NSW
State Government has abolished compulsory preferential voting for
State elections.)
One of the benefits with the preferential voting system is that it
allows voters to vote strategically. For example, a person can vote
for a minor party such as the left leaning environmentally aware
Greens Party and if they don't get up can have their vote flow onto
their second preference, which could be say the moderate/centrist
left Labor Party. The Labor Party would see the leakage of first
preference votes to the Greens and therefore think that they should
try to make their policies more attractive to the environmentally
aware voters to encourage them back to the Labor Party. The vote has
a double impact - you get the left leaning centrist party (Labor)
elected and at the same time send them a message about the
importance of environmental issues to you. Juice
Media explains the system of preferential voting well.
The Senate voting preference system is an order of magnitude more
complex than the House of Representatives. However I am sure the
smart people at the AEC would be able to develop an education /
advertising program to do this concisely.
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