It’s impossible to see the Morrison government’s rushed attempt at introducing a voter identification law as anything but a solution, and a moderately crafted one at that, to a problem that simply doesn’t exist.
Given the government’s general disinclination to make laws of any kind, the lack of any preparatory debate gives plenty of reasons to be suspicious of this one.
The proposed law is simple and carefully designed to tick all the “if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about” boxes routinely used to justify national security legislation. It requires voters, when fronting up to a federal election on polling day or submitting a pre-poll vote, to present identification confirming their name.
Photo ID is not required, and the list of documents which can be used as identification is long and liberal: passport, driver’s licence, proof-of-age card, birth certificate, citizenship certificate, government ID card or Electoral Commission enrolment notification. A credit or debit card, bank statement, council rates, or water, gas, electricity or phone bill are also acceptable.
If you can’t produce any of these documents, you can still vote. Either another voter who does have ID can formally vouch for your identity or, failing all else, your vote gets put in a sealed envelope with a declaration of your identity, which gets checked later against the electoral roll and can still be counted.
Why do we need this? The government’s explanatory memorandum says it will “improve public confidence about the integrity of ballot-issuing processes” and “reduce the risk of electoral fraud (in the form of voter impersonation)”. It will also bring us into line with Canada and Sweden — yay. And it was recommended by Parliament’s joint standing committee on electoral matters (JSCEM), which inquired into the electoral system after each election, in 2013, 2016 and 2019.
JSCEM has indeed been recommending voter ID ever since the Coalition took control of it, although it only seriously looked into it in 2013. So there has been no actual inquiry into the need for voter ID in the past eight years; the government has produced no data or research to explain why it’s suddenly become an urgent requirement so close to the next election.
As for the evidence in relation to the incidence of voter impersonation in Australia, well, there is none. There is simply nothing out there to suggest that any Australian federal election has ever been, or is at risk of being, tainted by people turning up at the polling booth and pretending to be someone else. That is despite our system — because it allows you to vote at any booth — being theoretically susceptible to the risk.
As Antony Green points out, after the 2019 election there were about 2,000 multiple mark-offs out of 15 million votes cast; that’s the indicator of possible voter impersonation. Mostly they were caused by clerical error. Twenty cases were referred to the federal police, and nobody was prosecuted.
At a practical level, voter fraud is an infinitely lower order of risk to Australian democracy than, say, a concerted Facebook campaign by a major party falsely claiming that its opponents have a death tax policy. Yet the government has expressed no interest in Zali Steggall’s push to tighten the law on intentionally deceptive political advertising.
If we don’t need it, why does the government want it? “Voter suppression” is the call from the left on that. The government, it’s alleged, is copying straight from the Republican Party’s US playbook, manipulating the law to disenfranchise voters who are less likely to support conservative candidates, such as the poor and marginalised. Specifically, in America, Black people. Here, likewise. After all, which section of the Australian population is most likely to have difficulty producing ID on polling day? Make it harder to vote, and they won’t.
The analogy is imperfect, because of compulsory voting. The actual negative impact of voter ID requirements is likely to be vanishingly small, given that the proposed law does make it very easy to comply. However, that’s not an argument in favour of the law.
In the absence of any stated or apparent rationale for bringing in voter ID (beyond the meaningless assertion about public confidence), it’s fair to look for a more cynical explanation. Some have suggested that this is the first step by the Coalition down the path of undermining public confidence in compulsory voting with a view to eventually pushing for a change to voluntary voting. It’s true that that would suit right-wing parties better, generally.
I don’t know; I find it hard to attribute actual conscious thought to anything the Morrison government does, let alone forward planning with a horizon longer than the next election. I think it’s just classic Morrisonian politics: a ploy designed to simultaneously distract the media and public with a straw man issue which can easily be discarded if the Senate crossbench jacks up against it, and to wedge Labor on a win-win basis.
In any event, this is bad law, not because it’s inherently evil on its own terms but because it impinges on personal freedoms with no justification whatsoever. It should be rejected by the Senate, and I hope it is.
I agree that fraud is endemic in Australian politics. It’s not the voters who are the problem, though.
Bradley is ‘undecided’ whether voter ID is being pushed as a first step to scrapping compulsory voting, because ‘I find it hard to attribute actual conscious thought to anything the Morrison government does, let alone forward planning with a horizon longer than the next election.’
That’s a fair point as far as it goes, but it ignores the source of this move – Queensland Senator James McGrath, with his obsession for ending compulsory voting, and others who share his views, including the IPA. The Morrison Gang on its own may be incapable of looking beyond the coming election, but on this issue it is being steered by those who know just what they are doing. In fact, that is generally how it always works with this government – Morrison’s ministers are not much more than puppets whose strings are pulled by those who do know what they want, such as the fossil fuel lobby or Murdoch.
Voter ID is so pointless in isolationso long as there is compulsory voting that even as a distraction it is not worth the bother. It’s actual purpose is to stir up bother with the obvious contradiction between being required to vote and having a barrier put up that makes it (a bit) harder to vote. This will make compulsory voting ‘controversial’ for the purposes of McGrath and his allies, they will use that for propaganda, and that’s progress towards their objective.
As well as non compulsory voting the other dream (for the IPA – nightmare for humans) is FPtP as constantly extolled by exSen Nick Minchin, ‘immanence grease’ of the hard right and the exParrot.
For clarification FPtP stands for First-past-the-post voting, rather than preferential voting.
I had to look up the abbreviation, and just adding this in case anyone else isn’t familiar with it.
For anyone unfamiliar with FPtP, it allows the person with the most votes to win although there may be a greater number of voters who did not choose that person.
Imagine an electorate of 100 in which 40 go for A, 30 for B, 20 for C & 10 for E.
A wins with 4 out of 10 – thus Thatcher ruled for 11 long years without ever winning a majority of the vote.
On the Morrisonian side of the equation, I can’t help but get the feeling that, like the proposed moving of the Australian embassy in Israel, that Morrison also has an instinctive thought process to follow the Trumpian / Republican path towards authoritarianism (and of course compulsory voting has to be removed to follow that path any distance). Thus, there is a risk that both McGrath and Morrison have an intention to undermine Australia’s independent electoral regime and reduce the participation of Australians in elections in the medium term.
As flawed as it is, I still feel that Australia has one of the better democratic processes in the world. We don’t need governments of any stripe undermining the independent and mandatory processes we have in place.
I’m less worried about voter fraud than I am about politician fraud – Michael Sukkar being the issue this week but another will turn up next week. I’ll believe the govt is concerned about people somehow taking advantage of the system when I see a Federal ICAC investigating Christian Porter’s slush fund.
Like the proverbial bus, wait 5 minutes and another one will turn up.
The danger is long queues at the polling booth while officials are checking ID. This can have two effects: (1) people giving up and going home, or (2) getting really pissed off at the government for wasting their time, … so long as the ALP and the Electoral Commission do their job properly and make sure all the voters know that Morrison has brought in a new law obliging you to show ID at the polling booth.
The solution to long queues are Democracy Sausage BBQs. Mate and I set up one at Telopea Park School near Manuka in 2003 to raise money for Mt Mugga Scouts in Red Hill. We located it with the light breeze blowing from behind us towards the queue so that the enticing smell of frying sausage fat wafted over the hungry Saturday morning voters/customers. The butcher donated most of the snags, Coles gave us some bread and we raised $1000 for our boys cub group. And had a bloody good time too.
Sorry DF. You won’t get me to stand an extra hour in the queue by offering me a sausage in white bread and tomato sauce. I’ll give up and be off to do something more worthwhile with my time.
Something more worthwhile than vote?
You do surprise me.
Agree about carbonised dead animal in dead white bread and possibly toxic tomato sauce.
This is exactly what happens in the US, enabled because the State Governments control the polling operations without any AEC equivalent. So in a Republican state, Democrat areas have fewer polling places with fewer booths, so people give up and go home. This can’t happen with compulsory voting, because not being able to vote because of the queues remaining at closing time shines a light on the inadequacies of the polling organiser.
Almost as if the disenfranchisement were intentional – hoodathunk!
Coming soon to a polling station nearby if we remain so relaxed, comfortable & complacent that, like the dog howling about sitting on the hot stove, we can’t be bothered to move.
Next they’ll try the US model & make us vote on a Tuesday.
The Govt will offer MyGovID in advance. It will blame the long queue on poor takeup of MyGovID. The real culprit is this stupid unnecessary law obliging voter ID. Scream now, or wear the consequences,
Just postal vote. That way your ID is your address.
As Electoral Commissioner Rogers told Senate Estimates, the problem is “vanishingly small” (2000/15m = 0.0001) but nevertheless he is “aware of all sides of the argument” – I don’t think he’ s got much choice. Maybe it’s just a distraction from the equally useless and unnecessary Religious “Discrimination” Bill, which Morrison is still pining after.