pathology_doc

Young voters silenced as they fall through electoral cracks.

Waa waa waa, rage rage rage, nasty government blah blah, oppressed young people blah blah blah.

In less than two weeks time, while the majority of Australians flock to the polls and cast their ballots, young people across the country will sit in silence, stripped of their democratic rights by our cumbersome and anachronistic electoral system.

Um... no, you're stripped of your democratic rights when a heavy with a gun or truncheon stands outside the polling booth and turns you away because of your sex or race, or because they recognised you from the Opposition electoral rally last weekend (the one which was disrupted by police violence).

Last Friday, the High Court overturned the Howard government’s 2006 changes to the Electoral Act. The amendments had resulted in the electoral roll being closed a matter of hours after the writs were issued.

I've hardened my previous stance. Shortly after dumping Rudd, PM Gillard said quite plainly and clearly that she would be going to an election in the near future. So why weren't these politically motivated youths, who now feel so shut-out, running to the AEC as fast as their legs could carry them as soon as she made that comment? Don't know about you, but that was my cue to update my enrolment. And I did so. Tell you how afterwards.

In an action brought by political advocacy group GetUp!, the court held these changes to be unconstitutional, thereby restoring the original seven day grace period in which individuals may place themselves on the roll.

As a consequence, an estimated 100,000 additional Australians, predominately youth, are now able to take part in this year’s election.

Predominantly idiots who didn't realise that one of the responsibilities of adulthood is ensuring that you are enrolled to vote.

Although this decision represents immense progress, systemic limitations in our electoral system still persist. In particular, the lack of an automatic enrolment mechanism causes widespread and ongoing disenfranchisement among Australia’s youth.

What fucking bullshit. The lack of an automatic enrolment mechanism does nothing of the sort. Disenfranchisement? That means you no longer have the right to vote. Disenfranchisement would be the ripping up of their applications and a letter in the post informing them of the same, or the absence of their names on the roll despite having put the papers in. What we have here is simply a failure of these brainless twits to place themselves on the roll the instant they turned eighteen.

Recent statistics from the Australian Electoral Commission reveal an alarmingly high proportion of eligible young people are absent from the electoral roll. At the beginning of July, over half a million people aged between 18-24 had not enrolled to vote, including one in two 18 year olds and one in three 19 year olds. Similar levels of disengagement were recorded during the 2007 election.

And who exactly is stopping them? Why weren't GetUp out there screaming their heads off as soon as Gillard replaced Rudd, that we were likely heading for a general election and it'd be good if people got out there and placed themselves on the roll? Why weren't they doing this as far back as late 2009, when a double-dissolution election was in the air? Because those "disenfranchised youths" weren't needed in view of what GetUp thought was going to be either a landslide loss (by Rudd to Abbott) or a landslide win (by Rudd over Turnbull)?

It would be easy to dismiss these figures as evidence that Australian youth are simply lazy and apathetic. Young people, however, vehemently deny this claim. Instead, they point to the high burden of the current enrolment process, which involves completing and signing a physical enrolment form and sending it to the AEC, as well as advising the commission of any changes in address.

The high burden of what? Filling out a form and mailing a fucking letter? Pig's arse. If you're going to whine about that, you fucking don't deserve the bloody vote. I don't see them whining about the effort they have to go through to get their bloody fucking drivers' licences!!!

This requirement of material postage constitutes a barrier to the political participation of today’s youth - a generation which has grown up relying on new technologies such as mobile phones and the internet. Similarly, the obligation to inform the AEC of residential movements weighs heavily upon young people, many of whom move states following secondary school, leave the family home for the first time, or shift between rental accommodations.

Oh, Christ on a fucking cracker. Now you're going to blame the internet and mobile phones? Typical namby-pamby soft-Left bullshit - blame everything but yourself; push the locus of control outward; show how pathetic and helpless you are. Half the problem is that probably none of these kids has even written a fucking letter in their lives. Do schools still teach that? It wouldn't surprise me to know they didn't. If you're too hopeless to fill out a form and shove it in a pre-addressed, postage-paid envelope, are you actually competent to vote?

Furthermore, given Australia’s status as the only English-speaking country in the world with enforced compulsory voting, many young people assume they are automatically placed on the electoral roll when they turn 18. The lack of adequate education concerning the enrolment process serves to perpetuate such misunderstandings.

I repeat my comments about GetUp dropping the ball in the shadow of the threatened double dissolution election in late '09.

Here it is for the masses: No, you are NOT automatically placed on the roll when you turn eighteen.

Why not? Because this is not Hogwarts, where a magical quill writes your name in the book when you're born, for the offer of a place to go out when you're eleven. Because the AEC is not Big Brother; is not watching you; and does not necessarily know where you are in order to put you on the roll. And if it were, you'd probably be screaming about the invasion of your privacy and the degree to which everyone knows everything about you, blah blah blah.

In light of this, it has been suggested that a system of automatic enrolment should be introduced. This proposal was put to the government by the AEC itself in 2007, was a recommendation arising from the Australia 2020 Youth Summit in 2008, and is a key policy of the Greens in the impending election.

Despite this, Labor did nothing in the three years intervening since the AEC proposal and nothing since the Youth Summit, and the Greens as much as GetUp must own part of the failure to warn the unenrolled that they should pull their fingers out and do something about it.

Under such a model, voters would be automatically entered onto the electoral roll as soon as they are eligible. The information required to do this would flow from Medicare, Centrelink, Australia Post, state education offices, driving license registration centres or other government departments. Additionally, a capacity for automatic updating may also exist, eliminating the need to declare variations in address.

If we're going to do that, we should link to the Department of Immigration too. Just to make sure the person who is being enrolled is actually an Australian citizen.

Interestingly, the AEC has operated a Continuous Roll Update process since 1999, which allows information obtained from various government agencies to be used to strike individuals from the electoral roll. Utilising the same resources to add and update people on the roll seems to be the reasonable next step.

The only reason you are struck from the roll AFAIK is when you are dead. In that case you MUST come off, lest someone use your name.

Both New South Wales and Victoria have now adopted systems of automatic enrolment for state elections. Such a mechanism is employed nationally in Canada, and is common throughout countries in Europe.

Such a system relies on centralised government data-sharing that a lot of left-wing groups find uncomfortable. So do I, and I'm not exactly a leftie. No, if you're going to go on the rolls it should be through YOUR writing and YOUR signature on a paper form that can't be faked by a bot or malware, and the Electoral Commission computers containing the rolls should be independent of all others. By law. Inefficient? Yes. But also somewhat more secure.

As we move towards 21 August, we must also consider the future of our democracy and the ways in which we might improve it. Moreover, as this Thursday marks the beginning of the International Year of Youth, it is more important than ever to focus on empowering the young people who will shape our nation’s future.

I don't want the future of my nation shaped by some dimwitted fuckhead who couldn't be bothered to watch the news, sniff an election in the air and IMMEDIATELY ensure that his or her enrolment details were up to date; or who found themselves incapable of filling out a form, putting it in an envelope (postage-paid, IIRC) and shoving it in a mailbox. Such persons don't seem like the sorts of people who should be given the right to 'shape the nation's future' even if their apparent terminal helplessness didn't stop them from doing so.

Implementing automatic enrolment on a federal level is not only logical, it is necessary. Doing so would ensure the integrity of our elections, facilitate the enfranchisement of our youth, and strengthen our democracy.

These youth ARE NOT DISENFRANCHISED. They are just lazy and ignorant. Not very long after Gillard hinted that she would be going to the polls sooner rather than later, I filled out a form (one page, if that), put it in a pre-addressed, post-paid envelope that the Electoral Commission had provided me, walked down to the post-box and shoved it in. It was that easy. Don't fucking try to tell me that an eighteen year old who has just completed twelve years of compulsory schooling, and who has probably gone through far more bureaucratic hoops to get a driver's licence or even a library card, is not capable of doing the same thing.