Samantha Donovan: Well, it seems many Australians have already decided who they’re voting for. 540,000 votes were cast just yesterday, the first day of early voting. That’s up by more than 200,000 on the 2022 first day figure. Dr Jill Sheppard is a senior lecturer in politics at the Australian National University and I asked her why so many Australians are heading to the pre-polling booths.
Dr Jill Sheppard: Early voting in 2025 is more a reflection of disengagement with the campaign and very early decision making around who people are going to vote for and then an eagerness to have that vote cast and to put the campaign behind them. In previous years it has been about convenience but as we get to these points of real saturation with early voting with almost half of the whole electorate voting early either at a pre-poll booth or via postal votes, that convenience has really been washed away and really now it is just about being able to leave the election behind.
Samantha Donovan: So are you saying people who vote early tend to be less engaged with the campaigns and the policies?
Dr Jill Sheppard: We see a very slight difference in levels of political engagement and not just engagement but trust in politicians and the political parties between people who vote early and people who wait until election day. We used to believe that people who voted early had baseball bats ready to turf out the incumbent government and that doesn’t seem to be the case so much. They are not necessarily less informed about politics but they are certainly less willing I guess to wait around for two extra weeks to see what the politicians have to say to them. They have made up their mind, they are ready to move on.
Samantha Donovan: Is it wise though to vote before the parties have released all their policies and costings?
Dr Jill Sheppard: Look, I think it reflects well on Australian elections that nothing ever really happens in the last two weeks that might change our minds. There is no great surprise that ever gets dumped right before the elections. And for voters with a bit of a longer memory, particularly before 2007, they will remember the huge campaign launches with splashy policy promises and all kinds of tax cuts and handouts to voters that were dropped in that one week out from the election as a real sweetener to try to get you to vote for them. That has really died off and some of that has been concerned around the inflationary effects of those sorts of cash grabs. But also I think because voters are a little bit more cynical about it now and they think that we are more than happy to assess the parties and the independents increasingly on the back of the last three years and not on the electoral bribes that we get right before the election proper.
Samantha Donovan: Now the Electoral Commission says you should only vote early if you can’t get to a polling place on election day, but it seems that’s not a hard and fast rule that’s enforced.
Dr Jill Sheppard: Yeah, up until 2010 the AEC was a lot more vigilant in enforcing the rules around eligibility for pre-poll voting. They’re in a real bind here because compulsory voting means that we have to turn out and vote even as increasingly we don’t really like the options put forward on the ballot paper. So we’re a little bit more disgruntled about having to turn out than we ever have been before in the past. And so the AEC has really taken it on themselves really admirably I think to allow as many voters to vote early as physically possible. It’s made their job infinitely harder. If you do turn up to pre-poll vote, a worker there will probably ask you, can you vote on election day? And as long as you say no, they take you on face value that you’re not lying and then you can cast your vote and move on.
Samantha Donovan: Do you think the parties are going to be watching this growing trend and taking lessons from it in terms of the timing of policy releases perhaps for coming elections?
Dr Jill Sheppard: In 2025, both major parties launch their campaigns officially a lot earlier than they have in the past. And that’s quite annoying to them because once the campaign is launched officially, they can’t use government money to help fund their campaign travel expenses. So they don’t like pre-poll voting. They also have to find volunteers to man those pre-poll booths for two weeks. All of these pressures really run into their campaign budgets and I think they would all much rather just have voting on election day. What I think we’ll see in future years is probably a reining back of that period to one week. I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of pre-poll voting in full because voters love it. But I think it’s probably unsustainable at the moment.
Samantha Donovan: So you think the AEC might change it, the Electoral Commission?
Dr Jill Sheppard: The AEC doesn’t have power to change it. It would have to be legislated by the Parliament and so it would need the agreement of both major parties. I think interestingly, if we have quite a large crossbench after 2025, they may move to reduce the pre-poll period because while it’s hard for parties to get volunteers to man the polling booths for two weeks, it’s really difficult for independents to do the same.
Samantha Donovan: That’s Dr Jill Sheppard from the Australian National University.
