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Tell Government Your Overseas Voting Experiences!
The Australian Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM) is presently conducting an inquiry into the 2007 Federal Election. This is your chance to make your voice heard on voting and electoral matters as an overseas Australian, whether you voted in the 2007 election or not. Make a submission by the deadline of Friday 16 May 2008 using our e-mail submission template. We set out some ideas for your submission here.
Read our "What You Need to Know About Voting in Australia While You Live Overseas" brochure now. Download an A4 version here, and a US letter size paper version here.
For important current information on voting and enrolment, and links to the AEC website, as well as a summary of the SCG's advocacy work on the expat disenfranchisement issue to date, go to this page of our site.
Current Limitations in the Law
Many expatriate Australians are disenfranchised because they've lived outside Australia for more than three years and the law currently prevents them from enrolling from abroad.
The SCG has been working for changes to the law in this area for several years. We participated, along with many disenfranchised expatriates, in a JSCEM Inquiry during 2002-2003 which yielded limited but nevertheless disappointing results. We argued the case for full enfranchisement again strongly within the context of the 2003-4 Senate Inquiry into Australian Expatriates which reported in March 2005. And we made a major submission to the JSCEM Inquiry into Civics and Electoral Education in 2006.
Your support on this issue will add weight to our efforts. If you have lost the right to vote in Australia, please get in touch.
The law on voting in Australia is governed by the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. Part VII of the Act is entitled "Qualifications and disqualifications for enrolment and for voting".
Two provisions particularly impact overseas Australians: Section 94, which deals with enrolled voters leaving Australia, and Section 94A, which deals with enrolment from outside Australia.
Enrolling to Vote in Australia
You must be enrolled in order to vote. A person is entitled to enrolment
if he or she is 18 or over and an Australian citizen. Young people who are
approaching their 18th birthday may enrol in advance by virtue of Section
100. It is also possible for a person who is not an Australian citizen to
enrol for an Australian Federal Election under Section 93 if he or she is
a British subject and their name was, immediately before 26 January 1984,
on the Electoral Roll. People who are in Australia on temporary visas or who
are deemed to be unlawful non-citizens under the Migration Act 1958
cannot enrol. In addition, persons of unsound mind who are incapable of understanding
the nature and significance of enrolment and voting, and persons serving a
sentence of 5 years or longer for an offence against the law of the Commonwealth
or of a State of Territory cannot enrol. Neither can a person who has been
convicted of treason or treachery who has not been pardoned.
The Australian
Electoral Commission (AEC) can refuse to include a person's name
on the Electoral Roll if the Divisional Returning Officer or the Australian
Electoral Officer considers that a person's name is fictitious, frivolous,
offensive or obscene, or not the name by which the person is usually known,
or is not written in the alphabet used for the English language, of if inclusion
would be contrary to the public interest. A decision not to include a person's
name must be notified to that person.
Under Section 99, a person who is qualified for enrolment can only enrol
for one Subdivision (electorate). To qualify to enrol for a particular Subdivision,
you must have lived in that Subdivision for the "one month last past".
Enrolled Voters Leaving Australia
Any adult Australian citizen leaving Australia for any period should inform the AEC.
Once you are enrolled for a particular Subdivision, and you have left Australia
to live overseas, or you are intending to cease to reside in Australia, then
you may apply to the AEC to be treated as an eligible overseas elector. However,
in order to be granted this status, you must declare that you intend to resume
residing in Australia not later than 6 years after ceasing to reside in Australia.
You may apply for eligible overseas elector status while you are still in Australia, within the three months before you leave. Alternatively, if you do not manage to tell the AEC before you leave, you can still apply for eligible overseas elector status within three years of departing Australia. The form you need to do this, whether you are in Australia or overseas, is the Application to Register as an Overseas Elector, available from the AEC website.
Assuming the AEC accepts your application, it will annotate the Electoral Roll so as to indicate that you are an eligible overseas elector. You are entitled to be treated as such from the time the annotation is made until it is cancelled. This status means that you are entitled to have your name retained on the Roll for the Subdivision concerned, and you are entitled to vote as an elector of the Subdivision. However, you should realise that even once you are on the Roll as an eligible overseas elector, if you are overseas during a general election and you do not vote in person at an Australian mission, and you also do not apply for a postal vote, then you are no longer entitled to be treated as an eligible overseas elector, and there is a strong chance that your name will be removed from the Electoral Roll after the election that you missed.
If you apply for eligible overseas elector status, and the AEC cannot find you already on the Electoral Roll, then you will have to enrol first. If you are still living in Australia and have not left yet, then this will not be difficult - just print off the enrolment form for your State or Territory from the AEC's website and send or fax it in. However, if you are already overseas, then you can only enrol from overseas within three years of leaving. The form you need for this is the Application for Enrolment from Outside Australia, available from the AEC's website.
Once you are safely on the Electoral Roll with your name annotated as an
eligible overseas elector, that is not the end of the story. The obligation
is on you to tell the AEC if you come back to Australia to live. You will
cease to be entitled to be treated as an eligible overseas elector at the
end of one month after the day on which you again become resident in Australia.
This would be important to note if you move back to Australia, for example,
for two months, between jobs overseas. In those circumstances you would have
to notify the AEC that you were going overseas again to begin your eligible
overseas elector status again. Also, as we have said above, if you are an
eligible overseas elector, but you miss an election while overseas, you cease
to be entitled to be an eligible overseas elector and you can be deleted from
the Electoral Roll. Enrolment again after that may be impossible from overseas
under the law as it currently stands, because of the three-year limitatation
on enrolment from abroad.
You must also contact the AEC if you abandon the intention to become resident in Australia again within 6 years of leaving. Also, if you formally renounce your Australian citizenship while overseas, then of course you will no longer be entitled to enrolment.
Extending Your Eligible Overseas Elector Status
If you want to stay away from Australia for more than 6 years, and you want
to maintain the right to vote beyond that 6 years, you can apply for a one-year
extension of your eligible overseas elector status at the end of the first
six years. You must apply for this extension within three months of the expiry
of the sixth year. Further one-year extensions are possible, but again, the
onus is on you to contact the AEC each time to make sure your name continues
to be annotated on the Electoral Roll as an eligible overseas elector. Applications
for extensions have to be in writing and signed by you.
Enrolment from Outside Australia
You may be an Australian living overseas who is not on the Electoral Roll.
You may have once been on the Roll and since had your name deleted, or you
may never have been on the Roll at all. Use the AEC's
online enrolment verification facility to find out instantly if you are
still on the Roll.
You can enrol from overseas in certain circumstances. The most important limitation on enrolment from overseas is that the application has to be made within three years of you ceasing to reside in Australia. Provisions in the Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Access to Electoral Roll and Other Measures) Act 2004 which changed the previous two-year window of opportunity for registering as an Eligible Overseas Elector and for enrolling from scratch from overseas to three years entered into force on 21 July 2004. This is a small improvement, but does not re-enfranchise the many overseas Australians who left Australia more than three years ago and are no longer on the Electoral Roll. See our media release of 18 June 2004 here.
On the Application for Enrolment from Outside Australia (available from the AEC's forms page) you must also declare that you intend to resume residing in Australia not later than 6 years after you ceased to reside in Australia.
If your application for enrolment from overseas is accepted, your name will be added to the Electoral Roll for the Subdivision for which you last had an entitlement to be enrolled, or for the Subdivision where a next of kin is enrolled, or for the Subdivision with which you have the closest connection. If you enrol from overseas, then when you are enrolled you are immediately an eligible overseas elector. See our notes above on how to maintain this status.
Special Rules for Spouses and Children
If you are the spouse or child of an eligible overseas elector, living overseas,
and you were under 18 years of age when you last ceased to reside in Australia,
and you have never been on the Electoral Roll, then refer to Section
95 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918.
More Information
Other pages in the Overseas Voting section of our website will be of further help:
· Overview
· Are You Disenfranchised?
· Help Us Extend the Right
to Vote
· Direct Representation
for an Overseas Electorate
· Voting in Countries
Where You Are Not a Citizen
· Statistics
and Reports on Overseas Voting
Background documentation can be found in the Overseas Voting folder of our Archives.
