The NSW Government’s proposed laws to allow the Electoral Commission to gather information from other government agencies and use it to update the roll, has caused a stir, with Bernard Keane in Crikey writing critically of it the other day:
This is about finding new ways to enforce a law that can’t be enforced effectively at the moment. But if you listen to Rees, you’d think it was for The Kids. Rees pointedly referred to the Board of Studies as one of the agencies that would be compulsorily providing personal information to the Electoral Commission. It’s characteristic of this shabby government that it would use an educational body as a means of law enforcement.
It’s disappointing to see the allegedly progressive GetUp mob not merely endorsing this shameful encroachment on basic rights but calling for it to be universal. Director Simon Sheik wants it to be applied at the Commonwealth level. “Australia has a proud tradition of compulsory voting and citizens have a responsibility as well as a right to vote to make sure that our parliaments are truly representative.”
Rubbish. Compulsory voting is a blatant encroachment on basic rights and the Rees government is now using its citizens’ private information, never intended for the purpose, to enforce it.
While Keane probably goes a bit over the top in what he says, it does make me very uneasy that the state government would use the excuse of enrolment to take people’s personal data submitted for a different purpose, even going as far as enrolling people against their wills.
While it is important that people are encouraged to enrol as much as possible, and it could make sense to allow opt-in options (such as having a box on a drivers’ licence application allowing a person to have that information forwarded on to the AEC) that could facilitate the provision of data where the voter consents, this proposal is largely about using the vast stores of information held by the state to compel voters in a more effective way.
I’ve previously posted about my opposition to compulsory voting and I won’t go into it in depth here, except to say that it gives the illusion of a healthy democracy and political participation while hiding dysfunction and allowing parties to ignore their base. One of the few limits on compulsory voting has been the fact that, if a citizen genuinely wants to avoid voting, they can simply slip off the rolls. This is obviously a flawed method, since it prevents the citizen from making a choice about whether they wish to vote at a date close to the election, since they would have had to enrol weeks earlier to get a right to vote.
The state government’s proposed changes would see privacy violated in order to compel voters to come to the polls against their will, and could also see voters avoid giving basic information to government agencies such as the RTA or the Board of Studies in order to avoid going onto the roll. If Australia didn’t have compulsory voting it would be much less objectionable to compel voters to enrol to vote, although I still think it would have its problems.
If you want to fix the problem of voters’ details not being updated and thus disenfranchising voters who move house, it is quite easy: you simply allow voters to enrol on the day and cast a provisional vote. Indeed, that appears to be included in the NSW government’s legislation. Any further moves are more about enforcing compulsory voting then preventing disenfranchisement.
Elsewhere: Macquarie Street and Poll Bludger beat me to the punch.
The AEC already has access to this information in order to be able to contact people when they move to encourage them to update their enrolment. My wife (who is not a citizen and was never on the roll) got a letter from the AEC asking whether she should be on the roll after setting up mail redirection to our new house through the post office.
Sam,
Is it a thing where they make a suggestion to the person, or does it happen automatically?
Sounds similar to what happened to me. It is a suggestion – they send you a form and invite you to enroll. It’s how I first got enrolled – when I turned 18 there were no elections any time in the near future, so I didn’t feel the need to rush out and enroll. A couple of months later I was sent a form via Centrelink with a letter advising me that I should enroll to vote, which I of course took the opportunity to do,
So the AEC does have access to some data that is shared by agencies such as Centrelink, but it is a very limited data-sharing process. There is no ‘automatic’ updating of a person’s details, all they can do is locate people who don’t appear to be on the roll and write to them inviting them to enroll. It is not a permanent link between data kept on individuals by different agencies.
I won’t reproduce my full concerns about this proposal here – you can go over to Oz’s blog and read what I posted there if you want. Suffice it to say that I believe we also need to consider what happens where there are discrepancies between records kept by different agencies, and whether that means that the only way to ensure integrity of the roll under this policy approach must inevitably be to create one central government database – ie introducing a national ID card system by stealth.
Over at Crikey I noted that Adam Carr laments the failure of the referendum to introduce of the Australia Card. He makes the point that all the information you provide to any state agency can already be accessed by various parts of the state – the Australia Card would have just brought it all together. Perhaps the issue isn’t about the slow encroachment on privacy (and I’m more concerned with the technical aspects that Nick C has raised elsehwere), but with the assumption that we need to somehow be protected by ever increasing layers of state bureaucracy. This assumption is based upon a fear of the ‘other’ – the commies over the hill, the ‘yellow peril’, those terrorists, boat people criminals and so on. This constant state of semi-fear leads us to a defensive mentality and with it a presumption that we need the state to ‘protect’ us. Elsewhere I commented on the difference between social liberals and social democrats – here is the classic distinction in the nature of the state – the overarching state, ever present in our daily lives, vs the laissez-faire state which sets parameters for individual and collective action but by and large does not engage with the day to day running of peoples lives.
So for me, if we accept the various interferences in our lives (the incredible regulation of most aspects of it) then we are half-way to accepting the introduction of ID cards, auto-enrollment, CCTV, detention centres etc. It strikes me that we’ve spent the last 20 years (under Hawke, Keating, Howard and now Rudd) being prepared for this.
Bleak, eh!
I think that there’s a pretty big difference between auto-enrolling and CCTV and detention centres (and having worked with the police a bit over the years my opposition to CCTV is greatly diminished, but that’s another story). Auto-enrolment is just a way to save peoples time and save the AEC money, pretty simple really. I would support an ‘opt-out’ though.
All they really need to do is arrange it so that the letters going out say “We’re going to enroll you with these details: XXX. If this is right, you need to do nothing. If this is wrong, tick this box and send it back to this address.”
There seems to be a lot of broohaha about the “misuse” of other government information in the proposed auto-enrollment bills, but I find the argument underwhelming. If you are willing to submit info to get a drivers license, what’s the big deal with it giving you a chance to vote for the people who decide on road rules, liquor laws, etc etc.
The real scandal is the Howard Government’s debauching of the rules in the spurious cause of “roll integrity” with the supposed aim of eliminating “electoral fraud”. Disenfranchising around 5% of enrolled voters who make the mistake of moving is the real crime…
Well, the bill, which originated in the upper house, was passed by the upper house yesterday with no dissenting votes and no amendments, meaning ti will probably go through the lower house today. Welcome to chaos I say.