Citizens urged to enrol and vote

Residents and businesses are being encouraged to enrol and vote in the upcoming Council elections by the NSW Electoral Commission, which
has launched its Electoral Information Campaign.

The Electoral Commission has outlined a three-phase plan encouraging citizens to enrol, pre-vote or postal vote if they cannot attend a polling place and turn out on election day.

An Electoral Commission spokesperson said the campaign would run across press, radio, the internet and social media until the day before the election.

Both City of Sydney and Leichardt Councils have voter turn-out below the state average. In the City of Sydney, only 69.6 per cent of enrolled voters participated in the 2008 local election, the third worst turn-out across all Councils in NSW. In Leichardt, 76.3 percent of enrolled voters participated. This compares to an average turn-out of 83.4 across the state.

Rochelle Porteous, the current Mayor of Leichardt said: “I want to see as many voters as possible enrol and vote. It is important that voters are well informed on the issues but a good turn out on election day is
a good result for democracy.”

Irene Doutney, a current Greens Councillor for the City of Sydney and the Party’s candidate for Lord Mayor, was supportive of “any campaign to get people to register to vote.”

Ms Doutney said: “If people have the chance to vote they should consider themselves very lucky and use it.”

Ms Doutney said low turn- out amongst young people, Aboriginal people and small businesses was a concern. Businesses, classed as non-residential voters, have the right to vote at local elections. The non-residential voter turn-out in the City of Sydney at the 2008 election was 396 businesses from an estimated 20,000 eligible businesses.

Patricia Forsythe, Executive Director of the Sydney Business Chamber said the enrolment process could be simplified to improve business participation.

Ms Forsythe said businesses “should not have to enrol for each election.” Instead, registered businesses would remain on the electoral roll.

“The process [of enrolment] itself is quite lengthy, and it probably is a discouragement for small businesses in particular.”

Angela Vithoulkas, the Living Sydney Independent Team candidate for Lord Mayor, is critical of the enrolment process for business voters.

Ms Vithoulkas said the current Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP “has a vested interest in silencing the business vote.” She said: “Council has done this deliberately, as a strategy to silence 50 000 [business] voters.”

The Electoral Commission spokesperson said the Commission was “working
hard” to contact businesses. The spokesperson stated advertisements had been placed in major metropolitan newspapers and the Commission had also sent out “just under 80,000 items of mail.”