Australia’s Electoral Commissions run a lot of different programs for school, universities and anyone else interested in how the various electoral systems work throughout Australia. Each electoral commission will run a ‘week’ or ‘day’ on the importance of enrolling to vote and do a voter registration drive.
But the sad part is that despite the good work produced by the electoral education officers, they’re just never given enough money to make that much of a difference. They’re largely assisted, unenthusiastically by secondary schools and a little more enthusiastically by universities and student organizations (the ones that are left that is); and other organizations like unions, NGOs, etc.
But even though there is some support from outside the respective governments for spreading information from the respective electoral commissions, it is not enough. The underfunding of Australia’s electoral commissions has meant educational programs and voter drives are among the first to suffer. It has also meant a reduction in the availability of resources to conduct local, state and federal elections. Every year one or more electoral commissions has difficulty in recruiting enough personnel to properly run elections.
It has also had the impact of forcing electoral commissions to seek private revenue streams from corporations undertaking board ballots to student organizations and large community groups.
Of course some people think that we shouldn’t have to vote at all; that it’s a complete waste of time because they’re all bastards; or voting for some other party (like the Greens) is dangerous or a wasted vote. But it is simply unacceptable in a supposedly democracy-cherishing nation to have our electoral commissions under-funded so that aren’t able to educate and inform their respective populations about registering to vote, the importance of voting, and staffing and resourcing polling centres and counting centres.
It would be a tragedy if Australia were to lose the National Tally Room because the Australian Electoral Commission is unable to continue to fund it.
Personally I think it’s convenient for Labor and the Coalition (federal and states/territories) to underfund Australia’s electoral commissions in order to diminish voter education. Of course this could just be one of my own little conspiracy theories.
Filed under: Campaigns, Rants & Raves | Tagged: AEC, ALP, Australia, Australian Electoral Commission, democracy, education, electoral commission, electoral commissions, electoral enrolment, electoral systems, federal government, funding, Greens, Liberals, National Tally Room, political parties, politics, state government, voter enrolment drive, voters
Thanks for your additional comments. You’re right about not being a conspiracy but it does make me wonder why an agency so important to ensure free, fair and open elections is so under-funded.
I totally agree with you about last year’s AEC ad campaign. It was perhaps their best ever and really made you pay attention. It’d be nice to know if those ads had an impact on enrolments.
While I don’t think there’s a full blown conspiracy to underfund the AEC/ECQ/etc. in order to game the system, it’s pretty clear that it makes the major parties’ jobs a lot easier if they have to convince voters to vote for them rather than the other major party.
Can you imagine how much trouble the major parties would have holding on to government if people understood the role of the Senate? Imagine how many minor parties would get support if the voters were told how preferential voting was actually a tool for political change rather than just ranking parties.
Elections must be held, by law. Underfunding the agencies which make these elections possible is, in essence, an attack on the right of the people to choose their government. Even if the underfunding’s not intentional, the way our state and federal governments treat the electoral commissions show a real lack of respect for voters.
I really enjoyed the AEC’s ad campaign last year about making your vote count. There were images of a guy taking a glowing jar down off a dusty shelf and it became an emotive “you can have your say” campaign rather than “you must vote or you’ll get fined”. I wish they had more money to get us all enrolled and to tell us about how voting in the Senate works.