Fw: GetUp & Ors v Electoral Commissioner
Lyn Jones
Congratulations.... again!
Late on Friday afternoon GetUp members won our second landmark court case in as many weeks. Last week it was a constitutional challenge that won the right to vote for over 100,000 Australians. Now a Federal Court win means that for the first time ever, an Australian who enrolled online will be able to vote at this election, paving the way for online enrolment in elections to come.
This win wouldn't have happened without you - and it's a testament to what 370,000 GetUp members can achieve together.
It sounds simple, but this will have a huge impact. We believe it may mean hundreds of thousands more Australians voting at upcoming state and federal elections - and the biggest beneficiaries will be young Australians and those living in rural areas. Over 1 million Australians are missing from the electoral roll and many can't easily access a fax machine, or take time out of their working week to visit an Electoral Commission branch or post office. Online enrolment will make it far easier for Australians to enrol -- especially those with disabilities, or whose first language is not English.
In Friday's case, the Federal Court found that GetUp's 'OzEnrol' website offers a valid way to enrol to vote. Built entirely on donations from GetUp members, the website makes it easy to enrol online in just 2 minutes. Of course, it would be preferable for Australians to enrol directly with the Australian Electoral Commission, rather than through GetUp's website. So now that we've proved it possible, and legal, to offer online enrolment, we'll be campaigning (after the election) to make sure the Australian Electoral Commission build an online enrolment tool themselves.
Click here to read more about the case: www.getup.org.au/campaign/FederalCourt
Congratulations and thank you to everyone who made this possible: to Sophie, the courageous 19-year-old who took on the case as a plaintiff; to Damian, Sally and their colleagues at Marque law firm; to our barristers Jeremy Kirk and Aditi Rao; to Prof. George Williams for his support; and to you! This case was only possible because of the contributions of GetUp members, who chipped in to build an innovative enrolment tool, backed an ambitious legal challenge, and have now changed our electoral system forever.
Thanks for being part of it,
The GetUp Team
----An update on last week's High Court victory ----
After last week's High Court success, the AEC indicated that the 100,000 voters enfranchised by the result would have to cast what's know as a 'declaration vote'. This means that unlike the rest of us, they would have to provide various identifying documents before their vote could be counted. At the last federal election, only 14% of declaration votes cast were actually counted. After requests from GetUp and several electoral experts, the AEC have now agreed (much to their credit) to print new electoral rolls and allow those 100,000 new voters to have their votes counted the same way as everyone else!
With the election just around the corner, here at GetUp we're sending more emails than usual at the moment. We know you can have too much of a good thing - so if you'd like to receive fewer emails from us over this busy time, click here and we will keep it to one every week or so.
GetUp is an independent, not-for-profit community campaigning group. We use new technology to empower Australians to have their say on important national issues. We receive no political party or government funding, and every campaign we run is entirely supported by voluntary donations. If you'd like to contribute to help fund GetUp's work, please donate now! If you have trouble with any links in this email, please go directly to www.getup.org.au. To unsubscribe from GetUp, please click here.
Authorised
by Simon Sheikh, Level 5, 116 Kippax St, Surry Hills NSW 2010
