TRANSCRIPT
It seems that in Australia, it's not voting day without a democracy sausage.
The sausage sizzle has become an iconic part of the Australian voting experience, which is routinely held up as an example of how to conduct elections.
But for some vulnerable groups - like people with disabilities - voting is not necessarily a straightforward, happy experience.
Stephanie Travers is a director on the board of People with Disability Australia.
"The rollout of the other alternatives to voting also still segregates our population... From my own personal experience, I'm a mail-in ballot voter now. So I don't get a democracy sausage. But I find it easier that way."
Stephanie Travers is talking about the challenges people with disability face in trying to vote in local, state and federal elections.
She says polling places aren't necessarily places that this group in the community can easily access - which means they don't automatically have a lot of choice and freedom in how they vote.
And she says that means there's invariably more paperwork involved, which voters without disabilities don't necessarily have to worry about.
“And this is the thing: when you have a disability there's always an extra step. So what People with Disability advocates for is some genuine co-design to try and make these places more accessible, both physically, process-wise, more readily available information, and some streamlining of it. Because I think there's a cohort of people with disability who are not voting because it's too hard to access, or they're too ill, or it's too hard to figure out.”
These extra requirements mean it's unclear how many people with disability are even enrolled to vote in the first place.
“That data isn't being captured. So we don't know how many people are missing because they can't get there, can't go because when you enrol you don't tick a box that says I'm a person with a disability. We would hope that the AEC gets on board with capturing the data. Because you can't fix a problem unless you know how many people aren't participating.”
Nye Coffey is the Victorian State Manager for the Australian Electoral Commission.
He says the AEC does its best to meet the needs of this group in the community.
“Obviously there's a very large proportion of the Australian population with a disability. But also, you know, a full spectrum of needs and requirements across the almost 18 million enrolled Australians. So we do everything we can to make our forms and our processes accessible.”
Mr Coffey says prior preparation is important for this group of voters because once an election is formally called they have a limited amount of time to put measures in place.
“We don't own any of our polling places and we need to secure them in basically 33 days from when an election is announced. So there's an understanding there.”
Initiatives to help disabled voters have their say have garnered attention in recent weeks, like a low-sensory voting station being trialled in Western Australia for the 2025 state election.
It features a booth with low-sensory lighting and access to break-out areas for use before and after voting in one polling station at Marangaroo.
Mr Coffey says the trial follows a successful pilot in Victoria - but the options provided for disabled Australians don't stop there.
“That might be using postal voting. It might be using telephone voting if you have blindness or low vision. Or it might be going to one of our prepoll voting centres early in the period where it's quieter. If you're in an aged care facility or a mental health ward or hospital, it's quite likely that we'll be servicing that site with a mobile site and people coming out to you. So there are a range of opportunities for people to vote.”
Stephanie Travers says in practice, these options aren't as useful as one might think.
“So for example, telephone voting for if you have a vision impairment. Our feedback from our members is that is still very hard to participate in. There's a lot of background noise in the background, the staff on the phone aren't trained well. There's virtual Auslan when people do go to vote - but there's usually only one person trained in that with the Electoral Commission when you go there. And you have to be - and it's usually the supervisor who is busy doing other things. So you have to go wait in the corner for half an hour to be able to participate.”
Still, Nye Coffey says election officials have consulted closely with organisations from the disability community to address their concerns - which includes accessibility.
“We've had a big focus in the last few years on the accessibility of our polling places. 43 percent of our 7000 polling places will be fully wheelchair accessible for this event and another 48 percent with assisted access.”
