Federal budget cuts have been blamed for the Northern Territory having the lowest rate of voter enrolment in Australia, with more than 26,300 people from rural and remote areas not enrolled to vote.

About 23,000 of those people are in the federal electorate of Lingiari, where the sitting member, Labor’s Warren Snowdon, has described the situation as an “absolute scandal”.

Under a federal government restructure in 2017, the Australian Electoral Commission office in Darwin was reduced from 16 staff to three, with five jobs axed in enrolment and four in Indigenous participation and voter education.

“Such underfunding is an underhanded but horribly effective way to suppress democratic rights,” Snowdon said. “Many Indigenous Australians live in these low voter enrolment areas. Their participation in our democracy is more challenging because English is often their second, third or fourth language, and their average income is as low as 50% below the Australian poverty line.

“Remote First Australians choose to live on their country but are denied their democratic rights when they do so.”

The AEC denied its services were reduced by the “restructure”, claiming the NT enrolment rate had risen over the two years to 2018, from 79.4% to 84.1%. However, this was still a significantly lower rate than in other states and territories, where 96% of people are on the roll.

The AEC said it successfully delivered an “electoral awareness officer” trial earlier this year to three remote communities, where locals work with AEC staff to help spread the word about the importance of enrolling and voting.

A second program, to clear the roll of duplicate and deceased electors, is due to be delivered early in the new year, an AEC spokesman said. New enrolments would “also be in scope”.

Snowdon called on the AEC to use direct enrolment in the NT. Direct enrolment is where Centrelink, taxation and motor registry records are used to automatically put people on the roll, unless they advise otherwise.

The AEC spokesman said direct enrolment was difficult to do in remote locations “due to mail services and available data sources”.

But Snowdon said the AEC had known since 2014 that 42% of Indigenous people were not enrolled to vote.

“Direct enrolment is a very successful and efficient program introduced by Labor, yet direct enrolment is not used by the AEC for at least 50,000 people in my electorate of Lingiari,” he said.

“I ask that they urgently review this arrangement to ensure that direct enrolment is available to all Territorians.

“The underfunding of the AEC, and the resulting denial of voting rights, is an absolute scandal.”