Former Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack has criticized voters in his rural New South Wales electorate after a significant rise in informal votes.
So far, 11,054 informal votes have been recorded in the Riverina division, where over 85% of votes have been counted. These informal ballots represent about 10% of the votes counted.
In 2022, the electorate recorded 7,794 informal votes, or 7.32% of the total.
Nationally, 749,809 informal votes have been counted, making up 5.27% of the voter turnout. This is slightly higher than the 2022 election and matches the rate from the 2019 election.
Nearby Parkes has a similar high rate of informal voting at 10.2%, while Farrer has 8.4%. McCormack described the figures as “shameful” and suggested that voters who waste their votes should not complain if the outcome doesn’t go their way.
“There are 103,000 names on the Roll of Honour at the war memorial so people could have a free and fair vote,” said McCormack, the Riverina MP. “Anyone who wastes their vote needs to seriously reconsider their actions.”
McCormack also advocated for a system similar to local and state elections, where voters only need to mark their preferred candidate with a single vote, rather than ranking every candidate in a federal election.
Political scientist Dominic O’Sullivan from Charles Sturt University expressed concern over the high informal vote rate, especially in Riverina, where there were 13 candidates for the lower house, the second-highest number nationally. He noted that such a large field of candidates often confuses voters, leading to spoiled ballots. He also suggested that some informal votes may be due to voter confusion about the system.
An Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) representative clarified that informal vote statistics were still provisional. A second count process would start on Wednesday, which could identify some ballots that were initially set aside as informal but actually met the rules for validity. The AEC also noted that the more candidates in an election, the higher the likelihood of informal votes.
