Bryan Palmer in an excellent post is getting into the nitty-gritty details of the Electoral Act. He has shamed me to read through the entire Act. Consequently I now have some amendments, improvements and modifications for the Electoral Act.

[Editors Note] : Bryan removed the link to his article - see here instead .

Regulating Political Speech

As Bryan has pointed out, it is Section 328 that is the most likely point of contention for internet regulation of political speech. Central to the Section is that it applies to "a person". But currently five percent of the country is outside of Australia's borders. The cheapest bandwidth and datacentres remain on US soil.

Even if Abetz wants to apply this Section to the internet it cannot be policed or enforced. It will end up another law that suffers from arbitrary use, and most likely will be used when it is politically convenient for those with the greatest access to the AEC to do so.

I seriously see no benefit in the application of this Section, toward the internet political culture, in enabling me to make better decisions when I vote. As I commented on Bryan's article I see this kind of information entering the internet as increasing debate. Not reducing it.

Internet Friendly Suggestions for Electoral Roll Consistency

The Electoral Act is required to be published at least once two years after a general election. Section 90 contains the language that the roll can be provided in electronic form.

There are a lot of private details on the electoral roll, such as name and address. It would be nice if we could do some kind of distributed continuous integration process on it. Where we could determine its consistency nightly without the need to see all the information explicitly, or the need to travel to a location that has an Electoral Officer.

Maybe it could be maintained in several places, at the Federal, State and Local level with each producing an MD5 or SHA hash of the roll so any inconsistencies are quickly brought to peoples attention. That would be a nice public distributed use of multiple users that are interested in that kind of thing.

Diaspora Friendly Amendment to the Electoral Act

Diasporans should be counted as Commonwealth Electors. Rather than being lumped in as State or Territory Electors. The Electoral Act only allows for State and Territory electors. Since the Diaspora is meta-national there should be the establishment of a Commonwealth Electoral Roll for those residing outside of Australia. There would need to be language to ensure a Diasporan isn't included on the Commonwealth roll as well as the State and Territorial Roll.

At the very least Australians overseas need a representative in the Senate to reflect their needs, wants, opinions and desires. Establishing a Commonwealth Roll for the Diaspora and Senate seats which at the very least match the Territories would be a good start. Currently there are approximately one million Diasporans, so in terms of Senate representation they should get more Senate seats than the Territories.

An Amendment to Section 83;

Form of Rolls

(1) Subject to subsection (2) and section 104, the Rolls may be in the prescribed form, and shall set out the surname, Christian or given names and place of living of each elector and such further particulars as are prescribed.
(2) Where an elector is an eligible overseas elector or an itinerant elector, the Roll shall not set out the place of living of the elector.

If the person is on the Electoral Roll then they should be contactable directly. If a diasporan is on the roll, it would be useful for the allocation of Senate seats to know at the least which continent the diasporan is on. It is possible that Europe may need more Senators to be correctly represented than Africa or South America for instance.

Section 94 and Section 95 define what is an overseas elector. Since the diaspora is so turgid a turn-over and such a large number of Australians, I wiped the necessity to return to Australia after six years.

(1) An elector who:

(a) is enrolled for a particular Subdivision of a Division; and

(b) has ceased to reside in Australia, or intends to cease to reside in Australia; and

(c) intends to resume residing in Australia (whether in that Subdivision or elsewhere) not later than 6 years after ceasing to reside in Australia;

I could not find anything in there that made voting non-compulsory for overseas electors. Even though by convention that is the case. Our system is so heavily informal. This suggest that legislation is an inflexible means to meet most demands, it also means that arbitrary enforcement pops up when suddenly interest is taken in a law by the authorities and for a period we get the constant reminder that the "law is the law".

I do not believe we would be hearing about bloggers having their speech regulated if it was not for the Liberal Party being concerned of the negative effect on their re-election of a site like www.johnhowardlies.com. If it was ineffective it would have been laughed off and Abetz would never have made his statement.

Universal Enfranchisement

I think universal enfranchisement is important to protect the politically weak from majority rule or government discrimination. The relevant section which covers who is entitled to vote is Section 93 ;

(1) Subject to subsection s (7) and (8) and to Part VIII, all persons:
(a) who have attained 18 years of age; and
(b) who are:

(i) Australian citizens; or
(ii) persons (other than Australian citizens) who would, if the relevant citizenship law had continued in force, be British subjects within the meaning of that relevant citizenship law and whose names were, immediately before 26 January 1984: currently under the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth Government.

Section 7 covers those that are not citizens under the the Migration Act of 1968 or those that hold temporary visas. Section 8 covers those that are ineligible to vote. It should be amended too.

(8) A person who:

(a) by reason of being of unsound mind, is incapable of understanding the nature and significance of enrolment and voting ; or
(b) is serving a sentence of 3 years or longer for an offence against the law of the Commonwealth or of a State or Territory; or
(c) has been convicted of treason or treachery and has not been pardoned;


is not entitled to have his or her name placed on or retained on any Roll or to vote at any Senate election or House of Representatives election.

(8AA) Paragraph (8)(b) applies whether the person started serving the sentence before, on or after the commencement of Schedule 1 to the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Prisoner Voting and Other Measures) Act 2004.

Treason and treachery was a hard one that I had to think about. But principles first, universal franchise is more important than preserving the entity we know as the nation-state. The issue that is raised with those in prison is what electorate should they belong in. The one that the prison is in, or their last address? I don't know what is currently done for those serving a sentence less than three years.

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More Reading on Electoral act

• Electoral Act
• The Electoral Act
• Disaporan Voting for Upcoming Federal Election