Electoral and Referendum Regulations 1940

Electronically assisted voting for sight‑impaired people (mechanics)

• Infrastructure and staff: The Electoral Commissioner must establish one or more authorised call centres and may approve forms and documents for registration and assistance (reg 42). Call centre operators must be pre‑poll voting officers (reg 41 definition & reg 42(2)).

• Registration and entitlement: A sight‑impaired person may apply to be registered as eligible for electronically assisted voting; the Commissioner must keep a register and give registrants a personal identification number and registration number (regs 43–44). A person may vote by this method only if they call an authorised call centre when voting is available, are verified as a registered sight‑impaired voter, and the voter’s name appears on an approved list, certified list or reference Roll (reg 44(3)). The Regulations set out specific reasons that would make a person ineligible (reg 44(4)).

• How votes are made and handled: The Commissioner must set procedures for how a registered sight‑impaired voter is enabled to vote; under those procedures a call centre operator may initial and mark the voter’s ballot papers according to the voter’s instructions, read the preferences back, envelope the ballot papers by Division and place them in a ballot box at the call centre (reg 46(1), (4)–(5)). The Regulations also require records of electronically assisted votes to be made and forwarded to Divisional Returning Officers for marking on lists (reg 49), and prescribe how ballot envelopes are opened, bundled and sent for scrutiny after close of poll (reg 50).

• Scrutiny and secrecy adjustments: Scrutiny of these votes follows Part XVIII procedures with specific modifications (for example, treating such votes as pre‑poll ordinary votes and making it irrelevant that the voter did not complete the ballot paper personally) (reg 51).

• Oversight and offences: Candidates may appoint one scrutineer to attend a call centre (reg 48). The Regulations create specific offences with penalties (usually 5 penalty units) for wrong conduct: interfering with voters, improper communication by scrutineers, unauthorised persons performing duties, destruction or interference with software/hardware/data used for electronically assisted voting (regs 48(4)–(5), 50(3), 51(3), 52, 53). Some offences are strict liability (regs 50(4), 51(4)). Defences exist where actions are undertaken by officers in the course of duties or by call centre operators assisting voters (regs 52(2), 53(2)).

Enforcement in relation to compulsory voting

• Court procedure: In prosecutions for failure to vote, the Divisional Returning Officer must send the elector’s reply to the court and the court must consider it as if given in evidence (reg 81). A prosecuting officer may rely on lodging a statutory declaration and a certified extract so the officer need not attend the hearing; the court may proceed in the officer’s absence and treat those documents as evidence (reg 83).

Who pays, who benefits, who bears burdens (mechanics, incentives and compliance points)

• Who decides: The Electoral Commissioner makes the operational determinations (call centres, times, verification and voting procedures) (regs 42–46). Returning Officers and Divisional Returning Officers have duties to receive records and conduct scrutiny (regs 49–51).

• Who pays / bears operational cost: The Regulations require actions to be taken by the Electoral Commissioner, Returning Officers and Assistant Returning Officers (see regs 42–46, 49–51). The text does not set out a new funding source; the practical effect is that the electoral administration (the Commission and its officers) will carry the implementation and operational costs of call centres, recordkeeping and the scrutiny process (regs 42–51).

• Concentrated benefits and access: The Regulations name specific private organisations as authorised recipients of roll information for particular items (reg 7(1)). That materially narrows which private entities are authorised for those uses and concentrates data access on listed organisations (reg 7).

• Compliance and administrative burden: Entities and individuals must follow procedural rules for registration, verification and recordkeeping (regs 43–46, 49–51). Scrutineers must satisfy statutory requirements before attending and must follow limits on communication and conduct (reg 48). Offences carry penalties and, for some, strict liability (regs 48, 50–53).

• Discretion and implementation risk: The Commissioner’s determinations (about days/times, procedures and approved forms) are not legislative instruments and so are administrative instruments implemented by the Commission; that concentrates implementation discretion within the electoral administration and creates reliance on administrative procedures rather than parliamentary rules (regs 43(2), 44(2), 46(2)). That discretion shapes how the permitted mechanisms operate in practice.

Transitional application recorded in the instrument

• The Regulations state that amendments to Schedule 1 made by a 2015 amendment regulation apply to uses of information after those amendments commence irrespective of when the information was given (reg 84).