Eligibility Exception:
holders of temporary entry permits, prohibited immigrants, conviction for treason, insanity, persons serving a sentence of three years or more
Right Vote Foreign Res:
Foreign residents right to vote for local elections or equivalent only
Expat Residency Requirement:
Expatriate citizens have right to vote for set number of years
Registration Type:
Online registration
Registration Basis:
Residence requirement
Registration Flexibility:
30
Multiple Registr Allowed:
Only 1 registration allowed at a time
Election Management & Enforcement
Nameof EMB:
Australian Electoral Commission
Independent EMB:
Yes
EMBNominations:
Three members appointed by Governor-General. Expert based membership.
EMBTenure:
Maximum 7 yearss
Who Runs Election:
Election Management Body
Nameof Elect Enforcement Body:
High Court of Australia sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns
Candidacy & Campaign Rules
Restrictto Candidacy:
For both the Senate and the House of Representatives, a person nominated must be: 18 years of age or older, an Australian citizen, and an elector entitled to vote at a House of Representatives election or qualified to become such an elector. You cannot nominate for the Senate or the House of Representatives if you are disqualified by section 44 of the Constitution and have not remedied that disqualification before nomination. Examples of this include: a member of a State or Territory parliament, unless they have resigned before lodging a nomination; a citizen or subject of a foreign power; serving a prison sentence of 12 months or more; is an undischarged bankrupt or insolvent; holding an office of profit under the Crown (e.g. Public Servant); or a permanent member of the Australian Defence Force.
Debate Average:
4
Debate Format:
The Sky News Daily Telegraph People's Forum, the first leaders' debate, took place at 7:00pm AEST on Friday, 13 May in the RSL club in Windsor, New South Wales. The audience was made up of 100 undecided voters selected by polling company Galaxy Research. The leaders open the programme with a statement, and close with a speech, with the unscripted questions asked in between. Shorten won the audience vote by 42 votes to 29, with 29 undecided. It drew an average of 54,200 viewers, making it the thirteenth most watched pay television program of the night. A third federal election debate took place on Friday, 17 June 2016. The debate was hosted jointly by News.com.au and Facebook, and was the first to be predominately broadcast using Facebook's video livestream feature.
Debate Mandatory Number:
Not mandatory
Campaign Length Minimum:
33
Campaign Length Average:
58
Debate Mandatory Number:
Not mandatory
Official Media Campaign:
Television is the preferred medium for campaign news in Australia.[17] At the 2004 federal election more than three-quarters of money spent on advertising was television based.
Opinion Polls Embargo:
Embargo for longer
Opinion Poll Release Time:
No restriction
Electoral System & Organisation
Elect System Main Election:
Alternative Vote
Main Election Type:
Federal
Main Election Cycle:
3
Numb Round Main Election:
One
Other Elect Systems Used:
Australia has a preferential voting system for elections to the lower house, with voters marking their ballot papers 1, 2, 3... in order of preference
Referenda_Law:
Section 128 of the Constitution specifies that alterations to the Constitution cannot be made without a referendum
Referenda_Binding:
In Australia, a plebiscite (also known as an advisory referendum) is used to decide a national question that does not affect the Constitution. It can be used to test whether the government has sufficient support from the people to go ahead with a proposed action. Unlike a referendum, the decision reached in a plebiscite does not have any legal force.
Fixed Open Term:
Semi-Fixed
Rules Non Fixed Term:
The Australian Senate has a semi-fixed term that can be cut short only by a double dissolution under Section 57 of the Australian constitution, used if there is a prolonged deadlock over a Bill supported by the Australian House of Representatives. After a double dissolution election, to restore rotation, newly elected Senators' terms are backdated to the previous 1 July so that they serve less than three or six years.
Open Term Notice:
43
Voting Machine:
None
Vote IDRequired:
ID not required
Polling Card:
No polling card
National Holiday Elect Day:
Never
Dayof Election:
Saturday
Districting Source:
Parliament
Districting Flexibility:
Wikipedia: Section 24 of the Constitution of Australia requires that the total number of members of the Australian House of Representatives shall be as nearly as practicable twice as many as the number of members of the Australian Senate. The section also requires that electorates be apportioned among the states in proportion to their respective populations; provided that each original state has at least 5 members in the House of Representatives, a provision that has given Tasmania higher representation than its population would justify. Section 29 forbids electorate boundaries from crossing state lines, forcing populated areas along state and territory borders to be placed in different electorates, such as Alburyin New South Wales being part of the electorate of Farrer, while nearby Wodonga in Victoria is part of the electorate of Indi.
Frequency Districting Change:
7
Election Night Traditions:
Tasmania Tally Room, Democracy Sausage
Polling Station
Average Voterby Polling Station:
2240
Minimum Ratio:
100
Maximum Ratio:
6000
Normal Opening Time Poll Station:
08:00
Normal Closing Time Poll Station:
18:00
Polling Station Numbers:
7000
Listof Polling Station Buildings:
local schools, church halls or public buildings
Choiceof Polling Station Buildings:
EMB
Accessibility Requirement:
A list of polling places is made available shortly after an election is announced. Each polling place is given an accessibility rating to assist people with disabilities or mobility restrictions. These ratings are: wheelchair accessible; assisted wheelchair access, or not wheelchair accessible.
Personnel Number Requirement:
3
Nature Station Personnel:
Paid volunteers
Polling Station Workers Rights:
https://www.aec.gov.au/employment/working-at-elections/what-to-expect.htm
Ballot Box Transparency:
Fully opaque
Box Feeding System:
Voter
Vote Receipt:
No receipt
Count Locallyor Centrally:
locally
Manualor Automatic Count:
manual
Nature Counting Personnel:
20,749 casual staff were engaged in 2019
Ballot Paper
Ballot Type:
Paper
Singleor Multi Paper Ballot:
Single
Max Numberof Votesper Ballot:
2
Ballot Paper Type Description:
Senate: A heavy horizontal line runs across the ballot paper. Above that line is a single row of boxes, each above the name (if given) of a party or group, though not for the list of Ungrouped candidates. The position on the ballot paper of each party or group list is determined by lot. A further change was that the large Council ballot papers were printed in six different colours – one for each of the six Legislative Council regions. Each of the smaller white Legislative Assembly ballot papers included a corresponding coloured stripe and water mark image.
Ballot Paper Type Photo Upload:
YES
Ballot Paper Size:
Variable
Ballot Colour:
Some variation allowed
Denominationof Candor Parties:
Full name
Candidor Parties Information:
Volunteers from political parties stand outside polling places distributing how-to-vote cards. These cards show voters how political parties or candidates would like you to vote. They may be taken into the polling place to assist in marking ballot papers.
Orderof Candidatesor Parties:
Other
Remote Voting
Temporal Remote Voting:
If conditions met
Geographical Remote Voting:
If conditions met
Personal Remote Voting:
If conditions met
Time Temporal Remote:
18
Remote Voting List:
Early voting station, postal voting, AEC mobile voting, telephone voting. You can vote early either in person or by post if on election day you: are outside the electorate where you are enrolled to vote, are more than 8km from a polling place, are travelling, are unable to leave your workplace to vote, are seriously ill, infirm or due to give birth shortly (or caring for someone who is), are a patient in hospital and can't vote at the hospital, have religious beliefs that prevent you from attending a polling place, are in prison serving a sentence of less than three years or otherwise detained, are a silent elector, have a reasonable fear for your safety.
Mobile Polling Stations:
Yes
Special Needs
Provision First Time Voters:
The AEC has a network of divisional and other offices located in most of Australia’s 148 electoral divisions. Staff in these offices conduct electoral education activities in the schools in their area and assist with advice and resource materials.
Provision Illiterate Voters:
Section 194 states: The following requirements for postal voting shall be substantially observed… (f) if the elector cannot read or is so disabled as to be unable to vote without assistance, a person chosen by the elector may, according to the directions of the elector, complete the postal vote… Section 200E states: Pre-poll voting: (7) If the elector satisfies the officer that the elector cannot read or is so disabled as to be unable to vote without assistance, a person chosen by the elector may, according to the directions of the elector, do any of the following acts: (a) fill in the pre-poll vote certificate with the required particulars; (b) read the certificate to the voter; (c) complete the certificate; (d) mark the elector’s vote on the ballot-paper; (e) fold the ballot-paper and return it to the officer. (8) Directions under subsection (7) may be given by reference to a how-to-vote card…
Provision Linguistic Ethnic Minorites:
Indigenous Electoral Participation Program
Special Provision Female Voters:
Pregnant Women: Certain electors may also be permitted to vote outside a polling place if they are unable to enter, for example because of physical disability, illness, or advanced pregnancy (see section 234A of the Electoral Act and section 36A of the Referendum Act).
Provision Blind Voters:
Voters who are blind or have low vision have the options of: casting a vote over the telephone from any location; casting a vote with assistance at any polling place or by post.
Provision Deaf Voters:
/ Assisted Online Questions for Deaf Voters. No mention of special voting provisions on website for deaf people. Only general for disabilities (assisted voting).
Provision Motor Handicap Voters:
Assisted Voting, Postal Voting, Mobile Voting, Telephone Voting. Approximately 300,000 impaired Australians voted independently for the first time in the 2007 elections. The Australian Electoral Commission has decided to implement voting machines in 29 locations.[5]
Targeted Initiatives
History Major Changes:
The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918: introduced by the Nationalist Partyof Billy Hughes, the main purpose of which was to replace first-past-the-post voting with instant-runoff voting (preferential voting) for the House of Representatives and the Senate. + All Amendments (Wikipedia)
Recent Major Changes:
In October 2001 electronic voting was used for the first time in an Australian parliamentary election. In that election, 16,559 voters (8.3% of all votes counted) cast their votes electronically at polling stations in four places.[3] The Victorian State Government introduced electronic voting on a trial basis for the 2006 State election.[4]
Failed Experiments:
Electronic Voting. Australia has experimented with pilots of Internet voting technologies, most recently in New South Wales in 2011. An assessment of the NSW program noted that there was a significant problem with mis-recorded votes, where votes were recorded as an alphabetic letter rather than as the required digits. Those votes were not counted, and voters were not able to re-vote. Other problems pertained to voter authentication, including a circumstance in which voters using truncated ID numbers (fewer digits than official ID numbers were required to have) were able to log in and vote. Using ID numbers was meant to anonymise the voters, but because the system failed to properly separate ID numbers from votes or voters, the New South Wales Electoral Commission was able to trace the votes to the voters using the incorrect ID numbers, completely contravening the country’s anonymity requirement.
Transparency Initiative:
Counts are observable by scrutineers on Election Day. After election day, scrutiny of declaration votes is done in two stages: the preliminary scrutiny of postal vote certificates and declaration envelopes containing pre-poll, absent or provisional votes to determine whether each person is entitled to a vote, and the further scrutiny where the ballot papers admitted to the scrutiny are taken out of their envelopes and placed into ballot boxes ready to be counted.