[LINK] postal vote oddity

[Roger Clarke]

At 1:11 PM +1000 19/10/07, Adam Todd wrote:
>The Electoral Office won't accept a "Null" address, nor will they 
>accept "Eagles Next Rest Area, on the F3 to Newcastle sometimes, if 
>it's not too wet" as an address.

HREOC addresses this, at 8:
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/HUMAN_RIGHTS/vote/index.html

There are a lot of highly unsatisfactory aspects of the present situation.

There's probably a constitutional or legislative requirement that the 
AEC/SEC perform some kind of authentication that the person is 
entitled to be enrolled in a particular electorate (HoR, Senate and 
State House(s)).

Given that we've successfully avoided having an inhabitant 
registration scheme imposed on us, there's no formal authority for 
home-address that AEC/SEC can use as a basis for address 
authentication.

Does anyone know what they actually do?

That sets a standard against which their procedures for the homeless 
and itinerants (and other awkward cases) should be judged.

(My quick reaction is that they should accept enrolments of this kind 
based on a sworn statement from the elector - which they should of 
course facilitate at the counter.  They might also quite reasonably 
place a time-limit on the validity of the person's enrolment, because 
the elector has declared that they're mobile).

-- 
Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW