Voting system

FOR 30 years I have been baffled by the thinking behind the Australian voting system – if there is any.

In the UK, the Polling Stations (Regulation) Bill states: “It shall be an offence to engage in campaigning activity within a prescribed area around a polling station on the day of a relevant election at any time during the period in which the polling station is open,” where “the ‘prescribed area’ referred to in subsection (1) shall be an area represented by a circle with a radius of 250 metres from the main entrance of a polling station.“This enables UK voters to make up their minds without being hectored by electioneers.

Australia has selected such a complicated and convoluted voting system that voters are forced to rely on how-to-vote cards, handed out to the queue by the campaigning political parties. If you miss one digit, your vote becomes informal.

I thought it unwise at my age to attend a Covid superspreader location, so I have applied online for a postal vote. The process was surprisingly easy, and if approved will give me time to consider the candidates carefully. But it makes me wonder why the AEC has not the competence to add online voting to its repertoire. When the papers arrive, they must be returned with my secret word on the envelope, to ensure that I am the one who has filled them in. But it would be just as easy for the AEC to add its own QR code or cypher to the paper, to be scanned or quoted to identify me when voting online instead.

I suspect that at least half of the voters would have little difficulty in using such a system, taking a huge burden off the ballot counters and giving an almost immediate tally. JOHN BILLINGSLEY, Toowoomba