October 27 Close of rolls: two sides to youth story?

The close of rolls numbers were released yesterday, and two newspaper articles today focus on the youth component.

George Megalogenis in the Oz presents the rosy picture; Paul Bibby in SMH is a glass half empty kind of guy. 

The truth, you'll be surprised to know, lies somewhere in between.

Here is yesterday's release, and 2004 and 2001 numbers can be found here.

George notes the number of 18 year olds on the roll actually dropped between 2001 and 2004, but rose in 2007. Good point, and ammo for the happy story. But the rest ain't so positive. 

My quick calculations have the proportion of the roll who are 18-24 year olds as 11.30% (2001), 11.27% (2004) and 11.26% (2007). Ok, it's a small continuing decline, but a decline nonetheless. 

Or put another way, according to Paul: 

"the proportion of 18- to 24-year-olds who are eligible to vote has not increased since 2004, remaining at 80 per cent, compared to 95 per cent for the rest of the adult population." 

[Update: that 80% number now appears too small, based on total - rather than eligible - population. Am investigating. Update: should probably be "the low '80s")]

Still, it could have been a lot worse, and the the AEC enrolment drive seems to have produced results compared with several months ago.

The figure of people who enrolled between the election being called on Sunday 14 and the writs being issued on Wednesday 17: that will be interesting.

[Update: Sarah Smiles in The Age (also with a sunny story) seems to have it: 77k. The comparison with 156k in 2004 - a figure I've never seen before - implies it is the total of new enrolments and re-enrolments. If this is the case, we know for the first time that some 79k re-enrolled in the 2004 close of rolls period; Simon and I had conservatively 'conservatively' estimated it at 40k or more - see note 7 here.]

Needless to say, if the writs had been issued when the election was called - as is usually the case - the roll would be 77k smaller.]

Why the roll ain't much chop

Paul also quotes Ariadne Vromen from Sydney Uni, that 

"the AEC should have the power to be more interventionist in using births, deaths and marriages information to get people on the roll because at the moment it's a bit ad hoc".

But that's not the problem. The AEC (and state counterparts) does data-match across lots of agencies, and they get plenty of great info.

No, the problem is that they can take people who have moved house off the roll with a flick of the pen (and a couple of warnings in the mail) but they can't just put them on at their new address without the person filling in a form. The same with folks turning 18; they must fill in a form. The AEC identifies them and sends them forms, but people are bombarded with forms these days and the AEC enrolment form got more complicated (and alienating) this year. The forms are just not getting filled in and sent back.

In other countries the authorities do this stuff automatically - if a person turns 18 they get on the roll, if they move address their enrolled address changes - as Simon and I noted a few months ago (near the end).

We should do it automatically here too. I'm sure we will one day.

In fact, here's Mickey for Australia's current enrolment procedures. (Not the AEC's fault, but our legislators'.)

Simon has posted on this also.