Chapter 4 - Voting

Removing signature requirements for postal vote applications

For several election cycles now, ECSA has been the only electoral commission in Australia not to offer the option of applying for a postal vote online at its state elections. The reason why ECSA has never offered online (or telephone) applications for postal votes is the legislative requirement that has been followed for over a century across Australia, requiring ROs to compare the signature on the postal vote application with the signature on the envelope containing the postal ballot papers. In recent years, every jurisdiction other than South Australia has updated its legislation to allow postal vote applications and registered declaration voter applications that do not contain a signature.

ECSA is aware of significant public expectations for government agencies to offer online services and recognises the significant printing and postage costs involved in the paper-based postal vote application process. More crucially, at the past 2 state elections, ECSA has observed inconsistencies in the timeliness of postal services, resulting in a significant number of rejected applications and electors being disenfranchised due to late arrivals of applications (2,133 in 2022, to be more precise).

ECSA seeks legislative change to allow electors to apply for postal votes online or by telephone.

The provisions of the Electronic Communications Act 2000 could be applied to the requirements for signatures within the Electoral Act, meaning that ECSA could already accept electronic applications for postal votes without pen-and-ink signatures. However, to avoid any uncertainty and to allow telephone applications, ECSA requests that Parliament remove the requirement for postal vote applications to bear the signature of the elector, replacing it with a robust verification process to be determined by the Electoral Commissioner.

This recommendation also applies to electors on the RDV who have applied to automatically receive a postal vote at each election. The discretion to determine what verification system ECSA uses is important to allow it the ability to adapt and evolve its processes to changes in technology as they occur without having to return to Parliament.

Recommendation 7.

That the Electoral Act be amended to remove the requirement for postal vote applications and applications for the register of declaration voters to be by letter and to bear the signature of the elector, so that a secure method can be implemented to allow electors to apply for postal votes online or by telephone while retaining a suitable verification process for returning officers.

Back to top
Back to recommendations

Postal voting timeframes

Postal voting at recent state elections has been impacted by several issues that have highlighted the unsuitability of the legislated deadlines for applying for and returning postal votes, currently 5 pm on the Thursday, 2 days prior to polling day, for the former and 6 pm on the Saturday after polling day for the latter. At the 2022 election these issues included:

These numbers constitute, in ECSA’s view, a strong indication that the postal service is not capable of meeting the current timeframes for postal voting stipulated by legislation.

The deadlines themselves are vestiges of a bygone era. The two-day deadline to apply for a postal vote dates back to the birth of the current Electoral Act in 1985, while the seven-day deadline to return a postal vote has remained unchanged since 1955, a time when Australia had regular Saturday postal deliveries.

It is clear from Australia Post’s current delivery times that the two-day deadline to apply for a postal vote is too late to ensure ballot papers reach anyone other than metropolitan Adelaide electors in time to vote at the election (and even that is not guaranteed).

And because Australia Post no longer operates on Saturdays, it is under no obligation to employ someone to assist with the postal voting process on a Saturday. ECSA has traditionally relied on the good will of an Australia Post team member to work on the Saturday to allow ECSA to manually collect any final postal returns. There is no guarantee that Australia Post staff can continue to offer this practice in the future.

After carefully reviewing the different solutions available, ECSA requests that Parliament move both deadlines.

Two factors need to be considered with the deadline to apply for a postal vote: Australia Post’s delivery times and the interruption to postal services provided by the Adelaide Cup public holiday on the Monday prior to polling day. Considering these factors, as in its 2018 State Election Report, ECSA recommends to Parliament that the only viable dates are those detailed in the recommendation below.

Even with these revised timeframes, overseas deliveries are highly unlikely to arrive in time. For this reason, ECSA recommends overseas postal voting be replaced by the telephone-assisted voting solution proposed in Recommendation 9.

With the deadline to return a postal vote, Australia Post’s delivery times need to be considered, along with the need to minimise the number of votes not being counted due to their late arrival. A postal vote sent from interstate using priority post currently takes up to 4 full business days to be delivered. Due to this, and the potential for future changes to Australia Post’s letter delivery standards, ECSA recommends that the deadline now be extended by one business day to the Monday, 9 days after polling day.

This change will impact the timing of the final distribution of preferences, and in extremely close contests, may delay the outcome of individual elections being known by 1–2 days.

However, ECSA notes that if it is permitted to implement several of the recommendations put forward in this report, there will be significantly fewer declaration votes at future elections which will make outcomes known far sooner in all but the very tightest of races.

Recommendation 8.

That the Electoral Act be amended to modify the timeframes for postal voting:
1. Bringing forward the deadline to apply for a postal vote from 5 pm on the Thursday prior to polling day to:
      i. 5 pm on the Tuesday prior to polling day for applications from South Australian locations; and
      ii. 5 pm on the Friday, 8 days prior to polling day, for applications from interstate locations.
2. Pushing back the deadline to return a postal vote from the Saturday, 7 days after polling day, to the Monday, 9 days after polling day.

Back to top
Back to recommendations

Telephone-assisted voting

Of the 1,261 postal voting packs mailed overseas at the 2022 election, only 2 (0.2%) arrived back in time to be counted. This was significantly worse than the already poor numbers reported at the 2018 election, when only 48 votes (6.7%) out of 712 mailed overseas arrived in time to be counted.

The delivery times for Australia Post’s standard international airmail service are quite simply incompatible with the calendar for postal voting in South Australia. At the time of the election (and at the time of publication of this report), they sit at 25+ business days for any country in the world, with additional business days for any address outside major metropolitan areas.

However, even using a much pricier express service to dispatch and return a postal vote from both ends, it is impossible to guarantee that a postal vote can make it across the world and back between the date ballot papers are printed and the deadline for votes to be received. This has been proven through the testing performed at recent by-elections as well as the experiences of electoral commissions in other jurisdictions.

Electoral commissions around Australia recognise that long-distance postal voting has increasingly become unfeasible and is failing to meet the needs of the large numbers of Australians travelling or residing overseas. ECSA shares the view of other commissions that a viable electronic solution is needed to replace long-distance postal voting, not only for overseas electors but for those in similar circumstances in remote locations of South Australia who are not served by remote mobile polling.

In its 2018 State Election Report, ECSA advocated for the establishment of a secure system for the electronic delivery and return of ballot papers at state elections, modelled closely on the system used in New Zealand. That recommendation was not supported by the previous government and was therefore not included in either of the electoral reform bills considered by Parliament in 2020–21.

Since that time, ECSA has also observed how the Electoral Commission of Queensland (among others) successfully extended telephone voting services to electors overseas at its 2020 local government and state elections. Telephone voting is a significantly cheaper and less complex electronic solution than the electronic postal voting system ECSA had previously proposed. Therefore, in October 2020, the Electoral Commissioner wrote to the then Attorney-General seeking legislative support to set up a telephone voting service to cater to electors overseas, as well as vision-impaired electors and electors with other forms of disability. As there was no change to the legislation in time for the 2022 election, ECSA was not able to offer telephone-assisted voting to overseas electors.

However, at the 2022 local government periodic elections, ECSA was able to implement telephone-assisted voting through the Local Government (Elections) Act 1999. Voting was available to electors who are blind or have low vision, or who were overseas or interstate during the voting period. A total of 744 electors voted using this service.

ECSA now seeks legislative change to implement a telephone-assisted voting service at parliamentary elections for overseas electors, interstate electors, electors in remote areas of South Australia not

well-served by regular postal services or remote polling services, as well as electors with a disability. ECSA is also seeking the capacity, as discussed in the call for legislative change in recommendation 5, to extend telephone-assisted voting when an emergency declaration is in place to any other category of elector who requires the service, as determined by the Electoral Commissioner.

Recommendation 9.

That the Electoral Act be amended to allow ECSA to replace long-distance postal voting for electors overseas, interstate, or in remote locations of South Australia with telephone-assisted voting. ECSA also seeks to extend telephone voting to electors with a disability, and should an emergency declaration be in place at the time of an election, to categories of electors who require the service, as determined by the Electoral Commissioner.

Back to top
Back to recommendations

Political involvement in the postal vote application process

Four years ago, on page 50 of its 2018 State Election Report, ECSA described how one major political party’s involvement in the postal voting application process had led to the confusion and disenfranchisement of some South Australian electors. As ECSA reported then:

‘In the lead-up to the election the Liberal Party distributed material to electors via mail, a dedicated website and on social media, requesting their personal details in order to send them early voting information and postal vote application forms. This caused confusion among many electors who mistakenly perceived it to be official material from ECSA… In addition to creating significant confusion among electors, these actions resulted in some South Australians being disenfranchised due to a belief that by responding to the material they were applying for a postal vote… While not contravening the Act, these actions caused confusion and disenfranchisement. Consideration must be given to prohibiting political participants from any involvement in the postal voting process.’

At the 2022 election, both major political parties set up and promoted websites with generic but official-sounding names and addresses: ‘VoteEarlySA’ with the address voteearly.com.au and ‘SAVotes’ with the address savotes.com.au. These websites, separate and unrelated to the parties’ official sites, purported to provide an information service to electors and help them apply for a postal vote.

On searching the internet for information about postal voting in the lead-up to the election, electors found that these websites featured first in Google searches, including before ECSA’s own site. Both websites featured prominent buttons inviting electors to ‘apply for postal voting’ or ‘apply for a postal vote’. This was confusing and misleading however, because neither site allowed electors to apply for a postal vote. Instead, the VoteEarlySA site promised a postal vote application form would be sent on ECSA’s behalf to visitors to the site who entered their personal data. The SAVotes site also sought to collect website visitors’ details but transferred them to a downloadable postal vote application on the ECSA website.

As polling day drew near, ECSA received numerous calls and emails from electors anxious about the whereabouts of their postal voting packs. It was evident from some of these calls and emails that some electors had been confused into believing that entering their details on the party websites meant that they had successfully applied for a postal vote. This misunderstanding was compounded for visitors to the SAVotes website, who received an email with the misleading subject line, ‘Your postal ballot is in the mail’. This email, sent to people who had entered their personal details on the SAVotes website but had at no time applied for a postal vote, incorrectly informed them that:

‘Postal voting packs, that include your ballot papers, will start being sent from Monday 7 March so they should be arriving in letterboxes next week.’

In addition to calls and emails, ECSA ended up receiving several complaints, social media messages, and responses to failure to vote notices from well-intentioned electors who clearly believed they had applied for a postal vote using a party website. By the time some electors contacted the call centre, it was too late to send them a postal voting pack, forcing some to attend a polling place in person despite great physical difficulty. As one elector wrote in their complaint:

Unfortunately for other electors who were physically unable to attend a polling place, this situation meant they were unable to vote at the election. Call centre staff reported that some electors were distressed by this, either because of their belief in the importance of participating in the democratic process or their fear of receiving a fine for not voting.

ECSA takes seriously its duty to ensure that all electors can exercise their democratic right and obligation to vote at state elections. It was therefore concerning and disappointing to see electors once again disenfranchised because of the confusion brought about by political participants’ involvement in the postal vote application process, despite ECSA’s warnings about this in the 2018 State Election Report.

ECSA also continues to be concerned about political party websites purporting to be generic voter information sites, which some members of the public clearly believe mistakenly to be the official ECSA website. It is essential that the public remain confident about the impartiality of the commission and be reassured that the postal voting process is managed as independently as every other voting channel.

Accordingly, ECSA now seeks legislative change to prohibit involvement in the postal vote application process by any person or organisation other than ECSA.

Postal vote applications distributed at post offices, but more importantly, the ECSA website and call centre—provided Parliament agrees to offering online and telephone applications for postal votes (see recommendation 7)—should be the only channels available to electors seeking to apply for a postal vote. Eliminating application channels outside of ECSA’s control will also increase the likelihood that postal vote applications can be received and processed sooner and that voters can receive their ballot papers before polling day, despite changes to Australia Post’s services reducing the timeframe available for postal voting.

In 2022, Victoria amended its Electoral Act to prohibit any person or organisation other than the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) from distributing postal vote applications. This change was recommended to the Victorian government by both the VEC and the Victorian Parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee following their enquiry into the 2018 Victorian State Election. ECSA recommends that South Australia follow the same approach.

Recommendation 10.

That the Electoral Act be amended so that an elector who is eligible to vote by post may only apply for a postal vote using a form provided for this purpose by the Electoral Commissioner, or via the commission’s website or telephone number, in accordance with the directions of the Electoral Commissioner.

That it be an offence for any person not authorised by the Electoral Commissioner to distribute postal vote applications, or to publicise or provide any alternative methods of applying for a postal vote, or any information that an elector could reasonably misconstrue as an alternative method of applying for a postal vote.

Back to top
Back to recommendations

Harmonising the register of declaration voters

The RDV is an increasingly popular option for electors who are permanently prevented from attending a polling booth on polling day due to living with a disability, being a carer for someone who is seriously ill or infirm, living in a nursing home, religious beliefs, or one of several other criteria.

ECSA is aware that the number of South Australians aged 65 and over is projected to increase significantly over the next decade, which will create a corresponding increase in the number of electors who may be eligible for and would benefit from becoming registered declaration voters.

The RDV is managed by the AEC, and South Australian electors who wish to apply to be registered are required to do so via the AEC website. ECSA is aware that electors have experienced confusion resulting from the different terminology used by the AEC with the more intuitive term ‘general postal voter’ prescribed in the Commonwealth Electoral Act. Furthermore, certain criteria on the AEC’s application form are limited to federal elections only, namely those relating to voters serving a prison sentence of less than 3 years or those who are defence or Australian Federal Police employees serving overseas.

ECSA is not aware of any reason why South Australia should not allow electors in these categories to apply to be on the state’s register.

To better support voters, ECSA believes that South Australia should amend its legislation to follow the example of other jurisdictions around Australia and change the name of its registered declaration voter program to the ‘general postal voter’ program and harmonise the list of eligibility criteria with Commonwealth criteria.

Recommendation 11.

That the Electoral Act be amended to change the name ‘registered declaration voter’ to ‘general postal voter’ and to harmonise the eligibility criteria of the registered declaration voter program with the criteria of the Commonwealth general postal voter program.

Back to top
Back to recommendations

Eligibility criteria for early voting

Early voting has seen a surge in popularity in recent years in South Australia and across Australasia. To meet this growing demand, electoral commissions in other jurisdictions have greatly expanded their early voting services.

ECSA recognises that in addition to changing demands on people’s time on Saturdays, public expectations about voting have profoundly changed. Research has shown that electors want convenient options that allow them to fulfil their democratic duty and obligations under compulsory voting.

Key to this expansion of convenience voting is the removal of eligibility requirements for early voting. Four Australian jurisdictions (NT, Queensland, Victoria and WA) have removed all early voting eligibility requirements in recent years.

For the 2020 ACT Legislative Assembly Election, early voting eligibility criteria were lifted for COVID-19 reasons, but the ACT Electoral Commission has since recommended to its Parliament that the criteria be permanently removed.

There is strong public support for removing early voting eligibility requirements in South Australia. ECSA’s 2022 State Election Survey of Electors showed an overwhelming 81% majority of electors believe that all South Australians should be allowed to vote at an EVC in the fortnight before polling day without needing to provide a reason and sign a declaration. More than a third of those in support rated the convenience of early voting and the lowering of barriers to voting as their main reasons.

Another important reason to remove eligibility requirements is ECSA’s inability to enforce compliance. As progressively more people vote early, the eligibility test has become problematic. The reality is that electoral officers cannot test voters’ claims to be travelling or caring for an ill family member and must simply accept them at face value.

Given the indisputable rise in demand for early voting, mirroring national and international trends, the public’s strong support for removing eligibility requirements, and the impracticality of enforcing compliance, ECSA again recommends legislative change to remove the eligibility criteria for early voting in South Australia.

Recommendation 12.

That the Electoral Act be amended to remove eligibility criteria for early voting to allow any enrolled elector to opt for convenience voting at an early voting centre in the fortnight prior to polling day.

Back to top
Back to recommendations

Encouragement of voting on polling day

In 2017, the government inserted into section 8 of the Electoral Act the requirement for the Electoral Commissioner to, ‘… promote and encourage the casting of votes at a polling booth on polling day.’ At the time, the then Attorney-General stated in his second reading speech that the intention of this legislation was to ‘discourage pre-poll voting for convenience’ and ‘curb the increase in pre-poll voting’. No other jurisdiction places this obligation on its Electoral Commissioner and ECSA recommends it be removed from the Electoral Act.

Recommendation 13.

That the Electoral Act be amended to remove the direction for the Electoral Commissioner to encourage the casting of votes at a polling booth on polling day.

Back to top
Back to recommendations

Issuing ordinary votes at early voting centres

The community’s expectation for votes to be counted and results announced promptly is challenged by the rise of convenience voting. All votes not cast on polling day are currently issued as declaration votes, which cannot be counted until the week after polling day once the electronic rolls have been checked, any hard-copy rolls have been scanned, and declaration envelopes transferred to each RO. As the number of declaration votes increases, the more likely it becomes that results in close elections will not be known for several days.

Casting a declaration vote is also complex and time-consuming for voters. Declaration votes take much longer to issue than ordinary votes, and each voter needs to complete a declaration, which can be challenging for voters with literacy issues.

As ECSA signalled in its 2018 State Election Report, the status quo approach to early vote issuing and counting is no longer sustainable, with ever increasing numbers of declaration votes impacting on the speed of both the vote and the count. Unless action is taken, queues will be longer and election results delayed, creating frustration for candidates and voters, as well as criticism of ECSA.

Nearly all Australian jurisdictions—the Commonwealth, the ACT, the NT, Queensland, Tasmania, and Victoria—have resolved this problem by issuing the majority of early votes as ordinary votes and then counting these on polling day. ECSA again recommends this approach be adopted in South Australia, and notes that the Western Australian Electoral Commission has also requested the same legislative change following their state election in 2021.

In the 2018 State Election Report, ECSA proposed issuing ordinary votes at EVCs only to electors from the electoral district where the centre was located. But following the successful rollout of electronic mark-off at all polling places in 2022, ECSA can now go one step further and recommend expanding ordinary voting to more categories of early voters. This is because electronic mark-off ensures that electoral officers can check an early voter’s entitlement to vote and mark them off the roll at whichever EVC they attend, all the while ensuring that there is no risk of multiple voting.

As a result, ECSA now recommends the following 2 changes:

Firstly, ECSA proposes to issue ordinary votes at EVCs for all electors from the electoral districts that the centre is designated to cater to. Accordingly, ECSA seeks legislative support to allow the Electoral Commissioner to designate an EVC as a polling place for one or more electoral districts.

Secondly, for any electors from outside the electoral district or districts that an EVC has been designated to serve, ECSA proposes to issue them absent ordinary votes, providing they can be found and marked off the electronic roll, as discussed in the call for legislative change in recommendation 17.

This call for legislative change is closely associated with another in recommendation 18 for ordinary early votes to be counted on polling day. Together, these changes will mean that the vast majority of early votes are issued as ordinary votes, which can be counted sooner, ensuring that a much greater proportion of the results are known on election night.

Recommendation 14.

That the Electoral Act be amended so that ordinary votes may be issued to electors at early voting centres that have been designated for their electoral district.

Back to top
Back to recommendations

Declared institutions and mobile polling

Nearly 15 years ago, in its report on the conduct of the 2007 federal election, the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) recommended that section 227 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (CEA) relating to mobile polling be amended to remove all references to ‘remote divisions’ and allow mobile polling at ‘... such locations and at such times as the Australian Electoral Commission deems necessary for the purposes of facilitating voting. For example, mobile polling ... should be able to be provided where there is likely to be sufficient demand for such facilities by homeless and itinerant electors, or in such other circumstances as warrant their use.’ The Australian Government endorsed JSCEM’s 2 recommendations and successfully amended the CEA to open mobile polling up to all divisions and, as it explained in parliament, ‘... give the Electoral Commissioner flexibility rather than prescription ... the power to determine the places at which mobile polling can be conducted.’

ECSA is of the view that adopting both of the above federal changes would be highly beneficial at the state level in South Australia. Giving the Electoral Commissioner the flexibility to determine other appropriate locations where teams of polling officials can go would allow ECSA to meet the special needs of sectors of the community by attending centres catering to homeless and itinerant electors (as well as others that ECSA’s stakeholder partners alert us to).

The Australian and Victorian electoral commissions (Victorian legislation also provides its Commissioner with complete flexibility to determine where mobile polling teams can visit) have reported that, in addition to allowing them to reach electors in difficulty, this flexibility also permits them to use mobile polling as an appropriate strategy to service voting needs at, for example, major sporting events and community gatherings that can interfere with an election period.

To achieve this outcome, ECSA again seeks the following changes to legislation:

Recommendation 15.

That the Electoral Act be amended to remove references to places within a remote subdivision to allow the Electoral Commissioner to establish mobile polling booths at any location in the state which he or she deems appropriate.

Recommendation 16.

That the Electoral Act be amended to abolish section 83 concerning declared institutions and electoral visitors, which will be replaced instead by mobile polling teams able to visit and take votes at any location that the Electoral Commissioner deems appropriate.

Back to top
Back to recommendations

Issuing ordinary votes to absent voters

At each recent state election, upwards of 80,000 voters have attended a polling booth outside their electoral district. These ‘absent voters’, as they are commonly referred to, have been making use of a voting option available since 1946 to ensure that electors who are away from home on polling day can vote.

But the process which absent voters must follow is complex and time-consuming. They must queue for much longer than other voters. They are required to complete and sign a declaration form, which can be challenging for many electors, particularly those with language or literacy issues. After voting, they must return to the declaration issuing officer and wait again before their vote is placed in a declaration envelope and then into the ballot box. This process takes at least 5 times longer than the one followed by ordinary voters, and over 10 minutes for some electors.

This long-standing process was necessary when issuing officers did not have access to the roll for other districts to check absent voters’ entitlement to vote. Requiring the ROs to verify absent voters’ entitlement to vote using the information provided on their declaration envelope and verify that they had not voted more than once at the election before marking them off the roll and adding their ballot papers to the count were important steps in protecting the integrity of the election.

But this process is no longer necessary. Thanks to electronic roll mark-off, it is just as easy now to check an elector’s entitlement to vote and mark them off the roll when they attend a polling place 500 kilometres from home as when they attend a polling place 50 metres from home. Electoral officers can be provided access to the electoral roll for all districts, check an absent voter’s entitlement to vote, and mark them off the roll in the same manner as election staff in the absent voter’s home district. Electronic mark-off in real time also eliminates the concerns about potential multiple voting that previously existed.

ECSA now seeks legislative change to issue ordinary votes to absent voters who can be found and marked off the roll electronically.

This would allow ECSA to modify the process required for absent voters, as other jurisdictions, including the Northern Territory, Queensland, and Victoria, have already done. This change applies to absent voters attending both polling booths and EVCs that have not been specifically designated for their electoral districts (if ECSA is permitted to issue ordinary votes to early voters as discussed in the call for legislative change in recommendation 14.

The way this works is as follows: after an absent voter is marked off the electronic roll and issued ballot papers, they proceed to vote as normal. Before heading to the ballot box area, they place and seal their completed ballot papers in an envelope indicating the name of their electoral district, which they then drop into the ballot box for out-of-district votes. ECSA notes that any person who cannot be found on the electronic roll will, as always, be required to complete a provisional declaration vote. Absent votes are not counted at the same time as ordinary votes cast in polling places established for the electoral district. Instead, when the ballot box is opened at the legislated time, the envelopes containing them are sorted, bundled, and then transferred to the relevant district RO for counting after polling day.

This change will reduce by around 80% the number of declaration votes issued at polling booths, and if ECSA’s request to be allowed to issue ordinary votes to early voters is agreed to by Parliament, it should achieve the same outcome at EVCs.

The result will be significantly reduced queues, wait times, and voter processing times, as well as reduced pressure on polling staff.

Recommendation 17.

That the Electoral Act be amended to eliminate the requirement to issue a declaration vote to electors voting at a polling place not designated for their specific electoral district, provided they can be found and marked off the electronic roll. This applies to both polling day voters and early voters (if Recommendation 14 is taken up by Parliament).

Back to top
Back to recommendations