General News
6 November, 2024
Perspective: Show snail mail voting the door
By CHRIS EARL THE POLLS have closed and there’s a result within hours ... in Queensland. Residents of the northern state went to bed on Saturday night with the knowledge they had a government, a new government in fact, to rule and govern for the...
By CHRIS EARL
THE POLLS have closed and there’s a result within hours ... in Queensland.
Residents of the northern state went to bed on Saturday night with the knowledge they had a government, a new government in fact, to rule and govern for the next four years.
Meanwhile, down here in Victoria where local government voting closed a whole 23 hours earlier (remember our northern friends are still one of the bastions resisting daylight saving), there’s at least another week, maybe two, before results are known.
That’s right! Allow up to a fortnight for the counting of about 2500 votes and sharing the result with candidates and voters.
Why? Because council elections in Victoria are postal ballots. No democracy sausages being sold on the fourth Saturday of October every four years. No gathering outside of polling booths by farmers, neighbours and friends chewing the fat about lamb prices, harvest hopes and foretelling fortunes of the football team already unleashing a bevy of recruits for the next season.
Elections are meant to be democracy in action - people engaged and engaging. But postal voting removes those opportunities, instead replaced by an envelope in the mail to be filled in and returned by snail mail for later placement into a candidate’s pile.
There is surely a compelling case to bring back voting on actual election day. Postal voting could be retained for those unable to visit a polling booth, perhaps with completed papers in the mail three days before.
Victorian Electoral Commission staff could then count the votes on the Saturday night. No waiting around for days and possibly weeks for a result.
In an era of immediacy where people want to know news straight away, inflicting a tortuous wait is at odds with current societal expectations.
And ditching wholesale postal voting would surely work out saving councils a few dollars.
That’s not the only area of local government elections in need of reform. Hundreds of property owners were effectively disenfranchised by State Government changes to the enrolment process. For as long as there has been the third tier of local government - right back to the first roads boards and borough councils in the 1850s - if you owned property, you had a vote.
The Government removed that “entitlement” for the 2024 elections. Instead, if you wanted to be on the roll, you had to apply. Loddon Shire Council sent hundreds of letters to non-resident property owners but only a small percentage opted in.
A return to in-person voting would surely aid awareness of the important role local government plays in the local communities. Conversations generated, ideas explored and, heaven forbid, potential future candidates unearthed.
There’s already a lack of interest in many council areas across Victoria where there were not elections. Three wards in Loddon Shire did not have an election and in one, the re-elected councillor had expressed intentions to retire. As the closest tier of government to the people, local government deserves at least the same electoral processes as are employed for state and federal elections. Currently, sadly, the imposition of costly postal voting lumbers councils with an inferior electoral model.
Opponents of in-person voting could argue that candidates are then hit with the cost of printing more election material and finding volunteers to hand out cards at a polling booth. That is no deterrent, rather added incentive for future and potential candidates to engage with their constituents.
Postal voting just dumbs down the democratic process, halts the wheels of democracy and action on the ground and serves to disconnect people from council.
And delays the announcement of election results for no good reason.