Everything you need to know about voting in the SA election

IT’S your democratic right, so use it wisely! Here’s everything you need to know to cast a valid vote in the South Australian election on March 17.

IT’S your democratic right, so exercise it wisely! To help you do it, The Advertiser sat down with Deputy Electoral Commissioner David Gully to put together this guide to everything you need to know to cast a valid vote in the South Australian election on March 17.

What is the electoral commission’s role and mission?

Our primary role is the administer the Electoral Act and that means we run elections for the 47 house of assembly districts and the Legislative Council, otherwise known as the Upper House.

What does the commission do between elections?

We run a number of elections for different boards, other legislative requirements for local government, Superannuation Board, we run other ballots for enterprise ballots and things. But local government supplementary elections is a big event. We’ve got this election in March and then we have to run all of the council elections for all 67 councils in South Australia in November this year, that’s a postal ballot across the whole state.

Recently the commission made some changes to electoral boundaries. Why?

Changes to the electoral boundaries must be done after every election by the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission. That’s a separate body. The Electoral Commissioner is one of the commissioners. Also the Senior Supreme Court Judge in the state is appointed as chairman of that commission and the Surveyor General also plays a role. And they come together after every election, within two years after polling day to look at changes in enrolments, where people move, increases or decreases in population to try to keep the number of electors in each district roughly the same. The Electoral District Boundaries Commission, otherwise known as the EDBC, commenced its proceedings within two years of the last polling day, so it was late 2015, early ‘16.

Can you put a number on the amount of electors that are now roughly in each of those seats?

The figure, the quota that the EDBC has to look at, is the estimation of the total number of electors in the state divided by the 47 districts so that they equal out as best as possible and that’s a figure around about 25-odd-thousand, bit over 25,000 now on average.

PODCAST: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT VOTING THIS ELECTION.

Did we lose

any electorates in the changes?

The number of electorates stays the same. We have 47 members of the House of Assembly, and each one represents a district, so we still have 47, that’s in our Constitution Act. People might have heard that we’re losing an electorate. That’s a Federal Division, because under the Commonwealth law the number of electors in each state can also trigger how many electorates you have, how many members of parliament. So for the federal Parliament, the House of Representatives, we’re going from 11 down to 10. That’s an exercise undertaken by the Australian Electoral Commission, the Federal body. and they’ll be looking at redrawing the state’s boundaries for that purpose, from 11 divisions down to 10.

What are the practical implications for voters on voting day?

About 400,000 voters have moved. At the time that the boundaries were being drawn, we looked at the actual people on the roll, and where the boundaries and the districts have been relocated. Of course, some of those 400,000 people may well have bought a new house and moved anyway, so the boundary change won’t affect (those people). But there are other districts that, while the boundaries might have been minor changes, they also had a change of name. There were six districts renamed.

If you live close to a boundary, will it matter which polling booth you go to?

The polling booths is an interesting question. There might be a booth that’s on a boundary, let’s say South Rd is a main arterial road. There could be a church hall or a school on South Rd. People will come from both sides of that road to vote, so generally those polling booths, we establish them as what’s called a shared polling booth. So it will be one location but two physical booths. There’ll be a booth for District 1 and a booth for District 2 and you can do an ordinary vote where you get your name marked off the roll and drop your ballot paper in the ballot box once you’ve filled it in. Some of those polling places are the same locations we’ve used previously so there might have been a location that was shared last time but the boundary’s moved 2km away. So it’s now not a shared booth but another booth will become a shared booth.

So if people aren’t sure what electorate they’re in, what’s the best thing to do?

There’s a couple of ways. One they can go on our website at ecsa.sa.gov.au and we have a district finder or polling place finder, you can go on there, it’s a mapping facility, you can type in your address. It will tell you what district you’re in, it will show you a map of the district and then you’ll be able to drill down and find out all the polling booths. We also have our easy vote card that we mail out after the roll closes on the 23rd of February. That will tell you your electoral district, your enrolled address and it will also provide the roll number and the page number on the roll that your name appears. So when you go to vote at the polling booth, the electoral official can look you up very quickly by going straight to the page, not fumbling alphabetically through the list. But more importantly, we’ve also just recently launched our EasyVoteCard app, which is a mobile phone (app for) Android or Apple so you can download it now from the Apple iTunes store or the Android Play store. And if you download the app and link yourself on the app, so you can put your given names and your surname, postcode, that will let you then choose the suburb within the postcode and the street within the suburb. It will locate your street and suburb, put your date of birth in, it will find you on the roll, link you up.

Is part of the mission of the commission to think of ways to make voting more efficient and easier on people?

Yeah, it’s an interesting thing. It’s something that people get to do every four years for a state election. Federally you’ll go every three or four years. We want to make that as streamlined as possible, we want to do things to help people out. We can’t really control how long you will stand in the voting compartment and fill in your ballot paper. But we can try to get you through the booth into that process as quickly as possible by not sitting there fumbling through the full list of 25,000 names, trying to find your name alphabetically by going straight to that page number. So, if you download the app, we won’t be sending your card in the post so you’ll get your information more quickly. And it’ll also have other information about how to vote, how to fill in ballot papers, how they’re counted and if you don’t get the app, we will send you the EasyVote card in the post.

How do you cast a valid vote in the Lower and Upper House?

In the House of the Assembly, the instructions are on top of the ballot paper. If there’s six candidates it will say you must number this ballot paper from 1-6. Very simple. So you choose the candidate you like most, give them number 1 your first preference and then number the other boxes in turn. It’s what’s called a fully preferential system. For the Upper House, there’s been some change, it mirrors much like what happened in the Senate election in 2016 for the Federal Upper House election. The change in legislation was that you can still vote 1 above the line, so the groups of candidates have a voting square above the line. So you can still vote in that section by simply putting a number 1 against the group or party of your choice. The preferences for the party or the group would then be allocated in the group order that the candidates are on the ballot paper. So if you want to vote for the ABC Group and the ABC Group has six candidates, it would be numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 down the Group automatically and our systems take care of that. If you want to vote below the line, you’re not required to number every box as you used to have to do. It was fully preferential. Now it’s partially preferential. The Act requires to vote below the line, you must put at least 12 consecutive numbers, 1-12 on the ballot paper. You don’t have to number every candidate.

What is a pre-poll vote and what do people need to know about the process?

A pre-poll vote, otherwise sometimes called an early vote, is a person who is entitled to do that because of one of the seven or eight criteria where you might be travelling, you might be going interstate, you’re on holidays, you’ll be working interstate, a female might be heavily pregnant and due to give birth, they might not be able to attend the polling place. So it’s the people who are precluded from attending a polling booth on the day. They can apply in person or by post to do pre-poll vote. And they’re always done be declaration where you’ll get your ballot paper, you’ll fill it in, it’ll go into a declaration envelope, you’ll sign the declaration and those votes will come back and they’re distributed after polling day to each of the returning officers and each of those 47 House of Assembly returning officers will receive those envelopes, they’ll process them, check that you haven’t already voted otherwise and they’ll admit them to the count in that week after polling day.

Can people cast a pre-poll vote anytime before the election?

Anytime from Monday the 5th of March. The postal votes will be distributed first on the 5th of March. The ballot papers will be available at pre-poll centres from Monday the 5th of March. That’s because the nominations only close on Monday the 26th of February, the Monday before. And of course the Upper House one’s a bit more complicated to do the draw for the position on ballot paper. That won’t happen until the Tuesday, the 27th. Then we get the printers to go and madly print 2.5m of each ballot paper to get them all around the place. We’ve got to get them overseas, interstate, into postal envelopes that have already been processed ready to go. So that weekend of the 3rd-4th and Monday the 5th there will be a mad rush of ballot papers everywhere and they’ll be sent out and available for pre-polling.

PODCAST: OFF THE RECORD

So if I live overseas I can expect something in the mail from the commission?

If you’re on the roll, we’ll be sending the EasyVote card to you, as long as your overseas address is on the roll. If people are going overseas and the only method of voting is a postal vote, the thing that they need to be mindful of is pick an address where you’re going to be, either with friends or relatives or a hotel or wherever you’re staying, in a resort. Pick an address a few days before polling day so you give enough time for the postal service to get it to that place. As long as I fill my ballot papers in before 6pm South Australian time on Saturday the 17th of March, you can sign it, have it witnessed, put in the envelope. It can come back to us up to seven days after polling day, so it’s got time to get back to us and still be counted.

A lot of people will be voting for the first time. What do those people need to know?

Our electoral roll at the last event in 2014 was a little over 1.042m. We’re about 570 people short of 1.2m. It’s the largest roll we’ll ever have in a state election year. So it’s almost 60,000 more than the last election, so they’ll be a lot of new voters on the roll who haven’t voted before. So I’d encourage them all to get in and find out a bit about the candidates, look at their material, look at their campaigning, they major parties all have websites Go and find out about what’s interesting to you, what parties have got principles that you might be keen to vote for and take part in the event.

You mentioned the roll is 60,000 bigger than last year. A lot of people think the population’s ageing here but we have advanced in terms of new voters?

Yes. There’d be some interstate migrations, of course, so it’s a mixture of things. From the last election someone who was 15 years old in 2014’s now 18 so we are increasing in population. I think there’s a significant increase in the roll because there’ve been a lot of younger people who might not have had it front of mind to get on the roll to vote in elections but we had the marriage equality survey late last year. That was a particular topic that young people and others took a keen interest in and wanted to take part in. It was an issue keen to their heart and they wanted to take part so that apparently increased the roll significantly so that was a very good event to have.

What are the minimum requirements for a vote to be counted as valid?

You can identify yourself by putting your name if you want — there’s no need to do that, of course. The legislation used to provide for your ballot paper would be informal if you identified yourself but that provision was taken out just prior to the last election so, look, I’d encourage every elector to maximise the power of your vote. It’s your one opportunity to have a say. There are a lot of people posting things on social media, you know ‘I don’t want to vote, it’s not worth it, I don’t care’. And a lot of people put comments back to them and say, ‘well, if you’re not going to take part, you’re not going to have your say, don’t complain about things when they don’t go right’. So, I think that’s an important message that the community gets and generally I think the community values the opportunity to vote and have a say in the democracy of government.

Is there still a penalty if you don’t vote?

Yes. First of all we have to send a notice out to everyone who appears not to have voted and that will commence within 90 days of polling day, so early in June there’ll be letters going out to everyone who appears not to have voted. That’s a please explain. If there’s no response, so the offence is failing to vote without a valid and sufficient reason or failing to respond to that notice. So if you get one of those notices, you better respond to it otherwise you’ll get an expiation notice. The expiation notice is $10 but with every expiation notice there’s a Victims’ of Crime Levy of about $60, if you don’t respond to that first expiation notice it then goes into a reminder, there’s an additional $52 reminder fee goes on top of that. If you don’t deal with it, it will escalate further and further until you can’t register a car or get your driver’s licence renewed.

All eyes will be on the results. Things might be a little bit more complicated by the Xenophon factor. When do you think we might expect a result?

I think the media and the pundits out there think it’s a different event this time because there’s three major powers out there where we’ve generally had two major parties and other minor parties that attract a percentage of the vote. But it’s pretty evenly spread by the polling, so it will be a different event. We’re not in the business of predicting too much. We’re in the business of doing the actual count and getting a result, so we’ll do what we do at every election. Election day votes will be counted on the night. There’ll be provisional results counted, all the first preferences will be counted for each candidate in each district and then the group totals for the Upper House will be counted in each polling booth. They’ll be relayed through our Returning Officer Network, they’ll be put onto our election results system, they’ll feed out to our Internet site, so they’ll be updated every two or three minutes on the Internet. They also get fed out to the media, television coverage and those that take a data feed and do TV coverage, so on the night we’d expect somewhere around about 70 per cent of electors on the roll to have voted in a polling booth remembering that large numbers of people are voting with postal votes and pre-poll votes where their vote’s in an envelope and they’ve got to be distributed back to the returning officers after polling day and they’re counted in those few days after polling day.