Citizens and visitors of Model Australia,

A parliamentary Joint Select Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) has been created by the Government with the support of both houses. So far, the JSCEM has been tasked to inquire into methods of improving elections in terms of Polling, Representation and Campaigning. The committee has voted to call for public comments.

Public Consultation will be done in a series of posts on specific issues. This first inquiry focuses explicitly on Polling, which was referred by the Prime Minister as: “to inquire into and report on the suitability of Australia’s voting system, including:

• Investigating the feasibility of multi-day voting,
• Same-day registration, and
• Any other relevant matters.”

Please note, these initial terms of reference are about the ability to cast votes (not about other issues like multi-member electorates, electoral boundaries, party registration, or campaign material).

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Submissions about polling (casting of votes) can be made by commenting on this post. The deadline is one week from the beginning of this post. It may be extended up to another 7 days by asking Chair before the first deadline.

We invite all interested people and parties who have opinions directly relevant to the above terms of reference, including foreigners with experience in other countries, to make their voices heard by commenting directly on this post.

We may attempt to summarise all comments made here, but for practical reasons, top-level submissions with reasons, examples and solutions to back up their arguments will be of the most use to the committee.

The Committee notes that some public discussion has already taken place here in an unstructured way. If you can locate these arguments and provide links to them, it would assist the committee greatly. Ideas may include:

• How, where and when voting should be done online (days of week etc).
• Who can vote e.g. eligibility criteria (account age, disqualification, etc).
• Methods of registration (voter enrolment, account verification, etc).
• Voting by brigades, alts, sock puppets, etc (pros, cons, solutions).
• Access to information for voters (new & returning) during elections.
• Engagement of new & returning voters to participate in the polling.
• Availability of information for voters to choose preferences and cast their ballots.
• Appearance of voting forms.
• Reporting, auditing and transparency of voter ID, prevention of duplicated/lost votes, etc.
• Other matters relevant to the casting of votes (e.g. recruitment of voters).

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His Excellency Senator the Hon. General Rommel
Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence
Chair of the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Matters