Push for online Council voting

At its November meeting Wanneroo Council endorsed a discussion paper on ways to improve voter participation rates in Council elections.

Since 2009 voter engagement in Wanneroo has fallen progressively from 28 per cent to less than 22 per cent at last year’s poll.

Mayor Tracey Roberts said the City would seek the support of the neighbouring Joondalup and Stirling Councils to explore strategies and options to get a bigger voter turnout.

“We want to work through the Western Australian Local Government Association (WALGA) to engage all Councils in the quest for a more inclusive and efficient electoral process,” she said.

“The solution may be a variety of election service providers and election methods such as a combination of postal and internet voting to suit the majority of people.

“The full online voting option should be explored as the technology for our ‘first past the post’ voting system would be fairly simple.

“Online voting has been used successfully in state elections in New South Wales and Victoria as either a replacement for in-person voting or as an option to attending polling booths.”

Mayor Roberts also noted that local government elections in Western Australia typically occur during the third-term school holidays when a significant number of families are not home to receive, complete or return postal votes.

“The timing of the delivery of postal voting packages has been shown to directly correlate to voter participation,” she said.

“We think it is appropriate and timely to consider alternative voting options, mindful that they may require amendments to the Local Government Act.”