Intentionally informal votes - like a dick and balls protest vote, or a vote for Harambe (the gorilla who died) as a nod to dank twitter humour - are on the rise in Australia, a new research paper has found.

But spoilt votes could be seriously impacting marginal seats that will decide the seemingly endless 2016 election.

Take the NSW seat of Gilmore, for example.

The difference separating Labor’s Fiona Phillips and the Liberal’s Ann Sudmalis is a tiny 405 votes.

But there was about 4000 informal votes in Gilmore for the Lower House that won’t count.

It’s a similar story for the incredibly close races we’re seeing in the seats of Hindmarsh in South Australia, and Forde in Queensland, where a crucial few hundred votes are separating the major parties.

For one of the closest ever elections in Australian history, those informal votes could have been particularly valuable for declaring a winner.

Plus, seats have been decided on much less. Remember Clive Palmer’s 2013 win of Fairfax by 53 votes?

Intentional vs. Unintentional votes

A paper soon to be published from the University of Adelaide, led by Professor Lisa Hill, shows that there’s been some big changes in informal voting in the last few decades.

First off, the number of informal votes has been rising.

According to the AEC, the rate of informal votes for the House of Reps this election was about 5 per cent (of the 11 million votes counted at the time of writing).

It’s actually down from 5.9 per cent of informal votes cast in 2013, which was the highest rate since 1984; but in the Senate, the amount of informal votes has risen from 3 per cent in 2013 to 6 per cent this time round.

But remember - not all informal votes are intentional, not all of them are decorated with male anatomy, and not all of them look like this:

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There’s always unintentional informal votes - votes which haven’t been filled out correctly (a box that hasn’t been numbered, for example) by mistake. The changes in Senate voting this year could account for the rise in unintentional informal voting there.

Typically, there’s been more unintentional informal votes than intentional informal votes. However, Professor Hill’s research found that’s changing.

“There’s been an overall rise in the informal vote generally, and there was a disturbing rise in intentional informal voting,” Professor Hill told Hack.

“Now intentional informal voting is on par, almost, with unintentional informal voting.”

According to Professor Hill’s paper, young people are the biggest culprits in intentionally ‘wasting’ their vote. The researchers found that the more young people (18-24s) in an electorate, the more intentionally formal votes there were.

“It’s worrying me that people are wasting their vote when an election is so tight,” Professor Hill says.

“My reaction is that that’s a criminal waste of your democratic birthright. Your vote is a very precious thing. People died so people like you and me could vote.”

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Professor Hill says she gets the disenfranchisement young people might have with politics - after all, 80% of 18-29 year olds surveyed by triple j said they didn’t believe politicians were working in the best interests of young people - but she offers a way to protest vote… while still voting.

“As long as you number the boxes correctly, and the 'D' that you draw doesn’t obscure your choice, it’s valid. So why don’t people just do that? But don’t waste your vote, it’s so precious.”

The thing I find saddest about it is young people are shooting themselves in the foot. They’re functionally abstaining from voting, and because of this politicians are starting to ignore them.

“But politicians aren’t stupid, they know who their customers are. If you don’t go to the shop, they won’t serve you. So then they just serve the people who do vote, which are always older and more prosperous people.

“These intentional informal votes could actually be determining the election. Young people actually have a lot more power than they realise.”

Keeping intentional informal votes down

If intentionally wasting your vote is such a big problem, could there be an alternative at the polling booths?

Professor Hill says there could be a few ways to at least make an intentionally informal vote be more constructive.

“I’ve suggested the option of having “none of the above” on the ballot, or the option of being able to cast an informal vote, but then having a little window there where you can write comments. It could be a protest comment or a suggestion comment.

“They should all be collected together and analysed and published, so people feel like they can put some feedback into the system.”

While young people might be driving a rise in intentionally informal votes, there is some good news in the 18-24 demographic.

There was the headline-grabbing jump this election in the number of 18 and 19-year-olds who enrolled to vote, when more than 90,000 additional 18-24 year olds signed up for their democratic right this election.

All up, it meant that 86.7 per cent of 18-24 year olds in Australia were on the electoral roll.

Professor Hill says that while it’s not a perfect figure, it’s actually a big feat when compared to the rest of the world.

“The thing is, by international standards, that [percentage of young voters is] huge.

“We’ve also got a 60 per cent turnout of homeless people, and in Australia we’re really ashamed of it. But in other places they go, ‘we’ve got NO turnout among homeless people!’ and they’d be proud to get 60% of the general population.”