What is the Minister doing to ensure visually impaired and blind people are able to independently cast a vote at the next federal election.

The Special Minister of State advises that the following answer has been provided to him by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).

The AEC conducts federal elections in accordance with the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (the Electoral Act).

Section 234 of the Electoral Act enables assistance to be provided at a polling place to electors who are unable to vote without assistance, including those electors who are vision impaired. For example, someone appointed by the voter can assist at the polling booth, or, if the voter does not wish to appoint someone, the Electoral Act allows for the presiding officer at a polling booth to complete the ballot paper as requested by the voter. In some circumstances, electors may nominate a scrutineer to assist them to vote. Also, voting screens have a broad red stripe on the leading edge thereby providing a luminous contrast to assist vision impaired electors with depth perception. This action was taken after consultation with groups representing vision impaired people.

In its submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters Inquiry into the 2001 Federal Election, the AEC noted that electronic voting should be offered as an alternative or addition to postal voting as it can extend the secret ballot to a number of groups of electors, including those who are vision impaired but who may be able to use screen-reader and speech synthesiser technology. However, the AEC expressed a number of concerns relating to security, logistics and costs about any proposal to introduce such voting, and the Committee did not favour a test pilot scheme in Australia at this time.

Changes to the Electoral Act to enable visually impaired people to vote without assistance are matters for the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and the Parliament to consider.