16 million Australians enrolled – the largest roll since federation

More than 16 million Australians are enrolled and will be eligible to participate in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, the Australian Electoral Commission announced today.

Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers said that the AEC had maintained the high enrolment rate at the previous federal election prior to the announcement of the marriage survey, leading to a now record high.

“An estimated 95% of eligible Australians were enrolled at the 2016 federal election, increasing marginally to 95.3% at 31 July. We expect this to reach a record high once processing has been completed,” Mr Rogers said.

“The maintenance of the roll is a significant achievement given the trend throughout recent electoral cycles for enrolment rates to dip mid-cycle.”

The AEC had processed an extraordinary 765,000 enrolment transactions since the announcement of the survey. As of the end of Thursday there were over 165,000 transactions still to be processed. This work will continue throughout the weekend.

Of the 765,000 enrolment transactions processed up to Thursday, 90,000 were additions to the roll. The AEC will provide final enrolment figures for the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey next week.

When processing of outstanding enrolment transactions has been finalised the AEC will send electoral roll data to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to enable the conduct of the survey. Further information about the survey is available on the ABS website.