Habitual non-voters are harder to woo than ever

Wednesday, 15th July 2009

Ross Fitzgerald says mainstream parties will struggle to win the 1.2 million Australians who are eligible to vote but don’t

The AEC makes education courses available to schools and other institutions. You simply call them and a suited public servant will come out and put on a useful PowerPoint show that offends no one and offers all the facts. Herein lies the problem. A significant percentage of the 1.2 million people who aren’t on the electoral roll don’t even know what the electoral roll is. Many others are so alienated from parliamentary processes that they don’t think that politics matters anymore.

Either way, the major parties don’t know how to deal with these groups and, notwithstanding the AEC’s good intentions, neither do they. This leaves the way open for non-mainstream parties to shake things up, especially in the senate. One organisation that might know a thing or two, especially about attracting the young, is the fledgling Australian Sex Party, which has just set up a website aptly named voting.org.au.

They intend to pursue the alienated young, the nomads, the geeks, the overly intelligent and all the other unregistered and reluctant voters with messages that neither of the major parties are able to give.

If mainstream parties are hoping to attract that great army of half a million web-savvy citizens aged 18 to 25 who think voting is a waste of time, forget it. These young Australians have had their worldview changed forever by the internet. They see communications technology as the real power these days, and see little if any point in voting. Try telling the alienated young that voting is important or the way to change things and they will simply ‘lol’: laugh out loud.

The Sydney University study is a warning bell for all mainstream political parties. Generation Y is fed up with disinformation, political obfuscation, and censorship. They want something different, and relevant to their young lives, or they will opt out of the system like no other generation has done before.

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Tancred

July 23rd, 2009 4:16pm Report this comment

Australia has a rather unique system of democracy, and one that I feel needs examining in light of the modern mutli-party world we are part of. While the federal senate and the state upper houses are elected using a system of proportional representation, the federal lower house and the most state lower house using preferential voting (also know as Alternative Vote). By requiring the elected member to win 50%+1 of the vote, and having single member electorates Australia has developed an almost unbreakable 2 party system, with alternative political views usually only heard in the upper house. This system is excellent if only 2 parties are running, but like elsewhere, Australia has a range of political parties and I feel it’s time for the system to be examined in light of the modern political world.

In the 2007 NSW election 39% of voters numbered NSW as there first choice, yet Labor went on to win 52 seats and have a 5 seat majority. 39% of the votes should have rewarded Labor with 36 seats. In the same election 9% of voters numbered the Greens as their first choice yet they won no seats.

In a modern mutli-party democracy single member electorates are not the fair system voters deserve. Single Transferable Vote (the system used to elect the Senate), with multi-member electorates would be a far fairer system, and may help to encourage people to register to vote

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