... like our vote means less than an Olympian's medal
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to students, at the beginning of the new academic year, about how exciting it will be that we have two elections to observe as we study politics here in Japan and at home in Australia. We can follow the different aspects of campaigning, media coverage, candidates and their promises as it unfolds in real time while we study our textbooks.
Japan's Upper House election will be in summer (here), due in July, while Australia's election campaign is in full swing, with election day on 21 May. Voting is a point of interest for my seminar students--we debate the pros and cons of compulsory voting in Australia and the fact that Japanese electors, even registered ones, are not so compelled. We compare the voter turnout figures--90ish percent in Australia compared with 53-55ish percent for Japan. And then conversation turns to 'the democracy sausage', the rather unassuming sausage with onions and sauce on a slice of bread which has in the last decade or so taken on a meaning likely unintended by the first local school P&C that came up with the idea.
Indeed, I introduce the concept of the democracy sausage to students as a way to get conversation going, showing them a photo of my Tokyo democracy sausage from 2019, outside the Embassy after I had cast my vote in person. The democracy sausage has received coverage here in the media via NHK the national broadcaster (in Japanese here) and on popular news programs. 'I'll be off to do it again on 21 May' I said to them in that first week of classes, not for one minute imagining this democratic function we have taken for granted for years here in Tokyo was about to taken away from us...
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| Tokyo, 2019 |
The sausage was a new addition to the Embassy polling booth in 2019, after a few of us had jokingly said in 2016 that 'gee, it would be nice to have a sausage sizzle to complete the atmosphere'...the Greens volunteers were handing out watermelon in 2016 which was nice but...have you really voted if you haven't been able to buy your democracy sausage (and the now vegan, vegetarian and halal options). My students like the idea and a couple of years ago they proposed a similar 'festival' atmosphere at the polling booth with yakitori and grilled squid might encourage participation.
Sadly, last week, I had to tell the students I wouldn't be going after all. Last weekend we learned that in-person voting in Tokyo wouldn't be happening but we could register for a postal vote (what the decisionmakers failed to realise was that the 'postal service' between Japan and Australia in a time of Covid has been pretty dodgy, to say the least). What started off as a couple of tweets of surprise by a few of us, has turned into quite the twitterstorm with the AEC getting involved as well, basically to tell us that postal votes are available just not in person and stop being so negative about it all. OK AEC, I'm sorry, but there is a lot more at stake here really. As we held our line, we learnt that several overseas posts will be open to in-person voting. Covid, we were told. But wait, we said, Tokyo continues to have rather strict Covid protocols, we wear masks, we sanitise our hands at every point...what is with the Covid excuse then?
What is a psephologist to do then but to dig a little deeper into the figures. And so I have. And my conclusions? Well, let's have a look.
Turns out, 'due to Covid restrictions', just 19 posts will have in-person voting. These include Brunei, Cambodia, China (two places), Cook Islands, France, Germany, Ghana, Indonesia, Nauru, New Zealand, PNG, Philippines, Taiwan, UK, US (two places), Vanuatu and Vietnam. Postal voting is also available at these places.
Now a Tokyo resident, say, an Australian with a psephological bent, might look at those places and wonder about the 'Covid' reasoning. Is it Covid? Is it just that the AEC and DFAT (the Embassy) have decided that the numbers don't warrant the bother. This was the city that hosted the Olympics remember? Thousands of people--athletes, team officials, media--came into the city, in a peak Covid time, (I know, I saw a lot of them in and around my work precinct) it was all managed over a few weeks but our Embassy, in Minato-ku, can't handle a few hundred citizens expecting to exercise our voting right on the day?
There are a couple of issues here. One is that 'long-term' residents lose their right to vote after five years. Now this seems a little arbitrary, especially in this era of globalization. And these are not residents who surrender their Australian citizenship either, but they lose the right to vote nonetheless. Australians living in Japan number around 10,000. Tourism numbers (visas) were estimated at around 500,000 in 2018. Now perhaps an in-person poll at the Embassy might be set up with the number of tourists in mind, rather than the fraction of the 10,000 residents who qualify under there five year rule. And of course, in 2019, tourists and visitors were still here in great numbers, pre-Covid. At the 2022 election, there will be no tourists or visitors because the Japanese government is still not issuing visas. That leaves the residents, some of whom were due to go home but fall into that group that have been 'locked out' of Australia while it closed down for Covid.
(Disclosure: I fall into this latter group, due to return home in March 2021, I had to arrange to extend work, accommodation and renew my visa given the uncertainty about when I might return. March 2021 was also the end of my five-year period of voting rights under normal circumstances. I remain affronted by the idea, like a lot of friends and colleagues here that five years is the limit.)
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| A recently acquired T-shirt, made by a Japanese artist, who cares about voting |
But back to the post, and the voting at overseas posts...let's have a look at the figures from the AEC website...
Total of overseas votes by division
There were approximately 61,000 postal (85) and Pre-poll votes (60710) recorded at overseas posts. There is a breakdown of the number of votes by electorate and it demonstrates, that while some numbers are low, nearly all electorates attracted overseas voters. These are votes that should be counted wherever they are lodged. For those candidates in seats with a small margin, I'm sure they would want to see 'every vote count'.
There were 13 divisions where over 1000 votes were cast, the greatest number, 2226 in Sydney. Among the divisions however, are a couple of seats with strong Independent challenges and seats where the number of overseas voters represented the difference between a win and a loss (Wentworth, for example, 1552 o/s votes in 2019, lost by Independent Dr Phelps and won 'back' by the Liberal Party, on a difference apparently of around 1200 votes.) Interesting to note that Kooyong, longtime Liberal Party 'heritage' seat, seat of PMs and PMs in waiting, a strong Independent campaign and in 2019, 1194 o/s pre-polls.
The division in which I'm registered, held by a sitting Labor MP, won on Green preferences in 2019, is similarly in a race where every vote will matter. In 2019, 754 pre-poll votes were included for that seat. Lilley, also in Queensland, which has a 0.6 (1229 votes) margin, had 365 votes from overseas.
We will come back to these figures after the election, especially the 'close' ones.
Now perhaps in the scheme of things, 61,000 or so o/s votes, setting up booths, having staff on hand etc, might be all too 'mendokusai' as we say here, not really worth the bother.
Votes at overseas posts
Recall that 19 posts have been selected for in-person voting.
in 2019, London 'dispatched' (*term used by the AEC) the highest number of votes to Australia, 13,428 votes. Accra (Ghana), dispatched 64. Paris dispatched 1176. Nauru dispatched 137. One could spend a lot of time looking at and comparing the numbers of the 85 or so posts from the last election. Tokyo, our point of contention, dispatched 1078 votes, neither London large, nor Nauru small, but 1000 or so voters who no doubt appreciated the opportunity to do so, and had assumed this to be part of the mission of the Australian Mission in Tokyo, as it were. As a student here in the 1980s, going to the Embassy to vote was a huge thing, a wonderful sense of 'still counting for something' despite the distance (in a pre-internet world, Australia was a long long way away). I remember the 1988 referendum where, as a member of the Society for Australian Students in Japan, preparing material for many of us here who wanted to know the details (in a pre-internet world where getting information was not a couple of mouse clicks away).
As I write I have applied for a postal vote as advised. But we have just had a week of public holidays and no mail deliveries (Golden Week) and we are getting inside the last two weeks and still no sign of the package. How much easier it would have been knowing my date on 21 May was at the Embassy gate...
Many of the concerns raised by friends and colleagues currently overseas were, as it turns out, raised in an Inquiry held by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs back in 2005 (yes, that rolls of the tongue easily, you are visiting the blog of a psephologist after all...😊), They Still Call Australia Home : inquiry into Australian expatriates (8 March 2005)
Chapter five, in particular, addresses the concerns around voting overseas. Statistically, numbers haven't moved a lot. In the 2001 election for example, 63,036 sets of ballot papers were issued. Some of the submissions cited 'the disenfranchised status of those removed from the Australian electoral role is felt acutely, especially by the politically active and informed'; 'I am well informed on Australian politics, I have enormous interest in, pride in and love for the country of my birth, and I just want to vote'... and similar comments, recorded in 2005, echoed in 2022. The report makes for interesting reading almost twenty years later.
Reading the report reminded me of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters which will no doubt convene for a report on the conduct of the 2022 election...tomodachi, we need to get writing, make submissions.
Another small point not to be overlooked too is the levels of 'soft diplomacy' carried out by Australians in Japan on a daily basis. We are not Ambassadors, we are not First Secretaries, but we are here doing our jobs, daily, living our lives, daily, on the ground here and there. I know in my circles that how where and when we vote actually inspires Japanese people to think about their own voting circumstances (ok, I might be talking about a niche audience, but I'm just one person doing my job.😄) We kind of expect a little more from the Embassy in return.
Australian citizens overseas for these last two years have felt they have been abandoned or discounted by the government. The Covid lockout and now this relegation to postal status for our vote...this very important election for so many people, has left us feeling, shall we say, disappointed. On the numbers, the Covid reasoning doesn't stack up and the costs will be beyond financial. Come on Australia, be better. There has been no comment (at this point) from the Embassy in Minato-ku.
More to come...as they say.
