http://www.news.com.au/feature.....5tasrw-1225908552299Election informal votes hit record high
From: AAP
August 22, 2010 6:10PMWHETHER by design or mistake, a record number of Australians are cutting themselves out of the political debate by casting informal votes.
In what appears to be a new record, by this afternoon a total of 618,435 voters had delivered informal votes.That's 5.64 per cent of all votes cast - a rise of 1.69 per cent on the 2007 election, although with counting continuing, that figure could change.
Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) spokesman Phil Diak said the informal voting rate did appear higher this time, although there was no information at this stage to say why.
"The AEC, as a matter of course, does conduct a review of the informal ballot papers, looks at all the ballot papers, after each federal election,'' he said.
ABC electoral analyst Antony Green said this was the highest percentage of informal votes since 1984 when the rate hit 6.3 per cent. In the 1983 election the rate was 2.1 per cent.
Overall, informal voting appears to be on the rise, running at 3.2 per cent for the House of Representatives in 1996, 3.8 per cent in 1998, 4.8 per cent in 2001, 5.2 per cent in 2004 and four per cent in 2007.
In the lead-up to the Saturday's election, former Labor leader turned reporter Mark Latham urged voters to cast an informal vote as a protest against the major parties.
Mr Latham insisted the high informal vote was really down to voter disillusionment and disengagement.
"Don't forget all the media criticism about the nature of the campaign, very little policy difference, very little that was worthwhile for the Australian people, and their response was a bigger informal vote, a bigger protest vote with the Greens,'' he told Sky News.
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