Good job on exercising those tasty little democratic rights everyone ‘cos voter enrolment stats for the 2022 Federal Election are absolutely ‘yuge.
The last day to enrol to vote was April 18. And after a big old push Aussies have absolutely come through with their enrolments.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) confirmed a whopping 96 per cent of eligible Aussies have enrolled, meeting the record high voter numbers of 2019.
The AEC says yesterday was the single biggest day for electoral enrolment in Australian history: they got 214,000 enrolment applications.
More than 700,000 applications received in the past week
More than 96% of eligible Australians are enrolled to vote
— casey briggs (@CaseyBriggs) April 19, 2022
“Yesterday was the biggest single day of enrolment in Australian history with 214,000 enrolment applications received – an unmitigated success for the election and Australian democracy,” said Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers in a statement.
While the AEC can’t quite confirm the final number count just yet it’s seen more than 700,000 voter enrolments in the last week.
“Quite frankly it is a modern democratic miracle,” Rogers continued.
“The systems operated smoothly and securely under the load and Australia now has the highest base for democratic participation it has ever had.
“Australians should feel great pride in this achievement and confidence that it sets the foundation for election results to reflect the will of the people.”
We’re proud to share our record enrolment numbers. The state of the roll is a modern democratic miracle, and not something you see in most places worldwide.
Thanks to the 214,000 Australians who made yesterday our biggest single day of enrolment in Australian history! pic.twitter.com/8ijDPVqgLO
— AEC ✏️ (@AusElectoralCom) April 19, 2022
He also confirmed that the AEC employees were absolutely putting in the hours over the Easter long weekend. Almost 1000 staff worked to make sure the enrolment process was safe and secure. Thanks to those icons.
And guess who deserves a particular shoutout? Young Aussies. Go off team.
Rogers revealed the majority of people who’ve enrolled to vote since the election was announcement are aged between 18 and 24.
Tens of thousands of young people ensured they were enrolled to vote in the last week. Those stats are particularly impressive given that only half of all eligible 18-year-olds had enrolled to vote by March 31.
And while you were all enrolling to vote over the long weekend, the pollies kept scuttling on down that election trail.
Scott Morrison defended Liberal candidate for Warringa Katherine Deves despite her rampant transphobia. Great, great. And Labor said it would back the building of new coal mines. Woohoo!
Then to top it all off Anthony Albanese rocked up on stage at Bluesfest to boos and cheers.
You can suss all the deets on all of that (and much more, because there’s no rest for the Australian electorate) in our weekly Election Recap.
More than 17.2 million Aussies will be enrolled for the federal election. Phew, that’s a lot of you. Great work team. Now go on and get an early democracy sausage.
