There’s a bunch of new legislation up for debate in NSW Parliament over the next few weeks and some pretty major new policy initiatives from the Government. Rather than trying to give an update on everything that’s happening I’ll pick a few of the ones I think are the most important or interesting and give an overview.
Changes to voter enrolment
This week the Government introduced legislation to change the way new voters enrol.
The new system will do away with the old “opt-in” method of enrolling where the onus was on the voter to provide their details to the AEC. The Government’s proposal is to use information from departments and agencies such as the RTA (Roads and Traffic Authority) to automatically enrol those eligible. The Premier describes these changes as “revolutionary”.
About 10% of the electorate aren’t on the electoral roll (400,000 people) and one-third of these are under the age of 25. Given that younger voters tend to support Labor over the Coalition, this move could be seen as a cynical ploy to shore up Labor votes before the next election.
I personally don’t think who people vote for should matter when it comes to electoral reform. In this case it’s more important that people are actually enrolled to vote and participate in the process, particularly in the light of reforms under the Howard government that made it more difficult to enrol.
Civil libertarians are concerned about the use of data for secondary purpose. While I’m sympathetic to that point of view, if the Government can back up it’s guarantee of restricting the use of data to voter enrolment then I don’t have a major problem. Particularly since the Government already has this information (and much more).
You should not have come back Oz.
Thanks for the advice.
If I don’t have anything useful to say, I probably shouldn’t say anything should I? [Edit]
Whilst this sounds like a great idea, I think it has some significant pitfalls. What happens for instance when different agencies have different address details for the same person (for instance, you may have moved house but neglected to, or been slow to, change your address with one agency, or the agency may have stuffed up)? Some people even have their names listed differently, eg one letter inadvertently spelled differently, or using an abbreviated name, with different agencies? What happens where records don’t match, will it lead to some people being enrolled multiple times under different addresses or slightly different names, or will people be taken off the roll without their knowledge?
I had a personal experience which I think should give some pause for concern. When I moved in mid-2007 both Centrelink and the RTA stuffed up the updating of my address details. Fortunately I noticed the problem in time because Centrelink does share data with the AEC and I may quite easily have been taken off the roll just before the federal election even though I had correctly updated my enrolment. The Centrelink staff member handling my form entered all of the new details, but then forgot to go back and change my actual residential address. The person at the RTA correctly changed my address, but then inadvertently changed it back to my old address when processing something else. How often do these errors occur?
Also, if you use a different postal address to your residential address, you may not bother updating your residential address with some agencies when you move because you figure all they need is your postal address. I, for instance, got a PO Box a few years ago when I needed one to receive official correspondence for the role I was in, and have kept it for personal use to avoid the hassle of having to change my address everywhere each time I move. So, all I do when moving is change my address with the agencies that actually need a residential address, I’m not even sure how many government agencies may still record me as living at past addresses because I’ve found no need to update that info with them since I still receive the relevant correspondence and so forth. This kind of thing will also heavily effect younger people such as students who may find themselves moving often, and may not be keeping up with keeping their residential address details current with all the relevant agencies. It may see more young people overall getting on the roll, but it will likely take quite a few off as well.
The more common proposals, like people getting an option to tick a box on forms where they change their address with relevant agencies agreeing to their changed address being forwarded to the AEC sound much more practical, as they at least give people the ability to know what details the AEC are getting. It will miss more people, but it would seem to be a far safer option.
Fair call, Nick.
Another suggestion I heard was for the AEC to send pre-filled forms that only need to be signed and then sent back, and any edits could be made to that.
Thanks Oz, that idea sounds as though it may address some of those issues.
None of this will occur until the Federal legislation is changed as all electoral roll maintenance in NSW is done by the AEC, not the NSWEC.
The proposal likely to be implemented is that when the AEC becomes aware of you having moved, they will send you a letter telling you they intend to move your enrolment unless you write back and tell them not to. They will only initiate this action if they have both a former address and a new address and they can easily write to both addresses.
I was at a conference on the subject recently and they do a lot of data matching between agencies and can easily identify more than 90% of people changing address. But the current legislation states that the AEC has to write three times to a voter at the last known address before they can take them off the electoral roll. What they want the legislation to be changed to is to write to the new address as well, and to offer the option for automatic re-enrolment.
I still think that is a genuinely good idea and will hopefully prevent people who move around a fair bit, like renters, being disenfranchised.
Your clarification will make poor Bernard Keane’s rant in tomorrow’s Crikey a bit redundant.
Perhaps we could call it ‘semi-automatic’ enrollment then? I must say, the initial reports did not add up to me. I couldn’t understand how they could do it without federal legislation, so perhaps it is a case of the NSW Labor spin machine drastically over-stating what they’re actually proposing and their role.
I have no issue with it. I saw that Bernard Keane did a ‘draconian’ article today, a term used far too often when clearly the Government is just trying to make life a bit easier and get people more involved (younger people mostly, so it would likely benefit Labor/Greens – but even if it didn’t I wouldn’t really mind.
See OZ is up with the news – not. Might be a blog on the reshuffle in 4 weeks on present form.
What’s up Pat Hills’ arse?
Can I just make the further point that if this proposal is as it is being most often described, ie using data from multiple agencies to automatically enroll people, then I think it is inevitable that to ensure the integrity of the roll and overcome discrepancies between details different agencies have on people, it will require the creation of a central government database combining all the date held on people by different agencies – so we will get a national ID card system by stealth, dressed up under the guise of protecting people’s voting rights, so that it gets support from people who may otherwise not support it. Now, many of you won’t have a problem with that, but I think it’s a point that must be considered.
If data was merely being shared for the purposes of tracking down people who aren’t on the roll so they can be sent enrolment forms and asked to sign them, and for making it easier to update your enrolment details by being able to ask for a change of address logged with one agency to be forwarded to the AEC, then I fully support it. If on the other hand we are going further and effectively creating direct links between multiple databases which may contain conflicting details on people, then it seems to me we may have administrative chaos which affects the integrity of the roll, and the solution to that will need to be the creation of a single database – no one will support going backwards from ‘automatic enrolment’ once it is introduced.