However, there was one aspect of voting that wasn’t mentioned, and that was the number of people who fail to enrol to vote and those who simply can’t be bothered to vote. 

A recent essay in the March “Quarterly Essay” by Richard Denniss, outlines some recent facts about voting in Australia and I quote these:

“The clearest evidence that Australia’s democracy is ailing is the fact that in a country with so-called ‘compulsory’ voting, at the 2013 election only 75 per cent of adult Australians cast a valid vote.

There are 2.3 million voting-age Australians who are not enrolled to vote (some being residents who never registered for full citizenship, others full citizens who just never registered), a further 1 million who are registered but didn’t bother to show up, and a further 800,000 who voted informally.

If the disenfranchised voters of Australia could be bothered forming a political party, it would be a major party.”

I found these facts alarming, to say the least. Do these facts apply to Orange and district? How do we overcome this serious concern? 

Keith Curry, Orange