There are about 22 million adults living in Australia, but at the 2025 federal election fewer than 16 million votes were counted. What happened to the other six million adults? This explainer goes through the voting process to explain who gets counted.
Tue 1 Sep 2026 10.01 AEST
Photo: AAP Image/Bianca De Marchi
The Albanese government is being accused of using the threat of crippling legal bills to discourage Australians from seeking access to public documents, prompting a crossbench push to change the law.
In recent years, the far Right One Nation party has transitioned from the political margins to the electoral mainstream. One notable explanation for their growing popularity seems to be a perception that they represent the concerns of less affluent Australians adversely affected by cost-of-living pressures.
There are about 22 million adults living in Australia, but at the 2025 federal election fewer than 16 million votes were counted. What happened to the other six million adults?
This explainer goes through the voting process to explain who gets counted—and who doesn’t:
Of the 21.8 million adults living in Australia in 2025, 3.4 million of them were not entitled to vote because they are not Australian citizens – despite living, working and paying taxes here.
Of these non-citizens, 1.2 million were permanent residents, most of whom have lived in Australia for some years and will do so for the foreseeable future.
A person’s connection to the community is not always reflected by their visa status. Because of Australia’s immigration system, someone could have studied and worked here for a decade without obtaining citizenship.
Nonetheless, only 18.4 million adult residents were citizens, and therefore eligible to vote.
Of the 18.4 million Australian citizens eligible to vote, 333,000 were not recorded on the electoral roll. That left 18.1 million able to vote in the 2025 federal election.
An enrolment rate of 98% is excellent by historical standards. The Australian Electoral Commission has implemented automatic enrolment alerts for eligible Australians, and had made a special effort to enrol Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people ahead of the 2023 Voice referendum. However, enrolment among Indigenous Australians, at about 93%, is still significantly lower than the rest of the population.
Of the 18.1 million Australians on the electoral roll, only 90.1% “turned out”, meaning that they showed up to vote or sent in a postal vote.
Turnout of 90.1% is very high by international standards, a testament to Australia’s compulsory voting system which recognises voting as a civic duty as well as a right. It is up from the 2022 election, when turnout dipped below 90% for the first time in a century.
Even so, with 1.7 million Australians failing to turn up to vote, only 16.4 million Australians actually cast a vote.
While 16.4 million Australians cast a vote at the 2025 federal election, many of these were discarded for being “informal”. They were filled out incorrectly or left blank.
Some voters would have done so deliberately, but for others this would have been an accident.
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Because Australia has two houses of Parliament, every Australian gets two votes: one for their local member in the House of Representatives and one for their state or territory’s senators in the Senate.
For their House vote, around 900,000 Australians (5.6%) cast an invalid vote. Around 600,000 Australians (3.5%) did so in the Senate.
To make sure your vote is counted, number every box and double-check that you have not repeated any numbers. Do not write your name on the ballot paper.
With invalid votes excluded, only 15.9 million Australians had their Senate vote counted at the last election. Even fewer, 15.5 million, had their House vote counted – in a country with about 22 million adult residents.
When non-citizen residents, no-shows and invalid voters are considered, Australia’s elections are less participatory than turnout figures suggest. Only about 73% of the voting-age population in Australia were counted at the last election, about the same as New Zealand.
Since New Zealand has no compulsory voting, this shows that compulsory voting alone cannot ensure Australia’s democracy is as participatory as possible.
Several other countries, like Jamaica and the UK, allow Australian expatriates to vote in their national elections. New Zealand allows all long-term residents to vote. Australia does not return the favour.
Australia could increase democratic participation by extending the vote to adult permanent residents, either by making the pathway to citizenship easier or by allowing some permanent residents to vote.
There is also a case to be made for allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote. As Troy Bramston argues:
“Lowering the minimum voting age from 18 to 16 will encourage a more active and engaged democratic citizenry, and when coupled with increased public information and civics education in schools, there is no valid argument against this reform.”
The voting age is lower in countries like Indonesia (17), Greece (17), Austria (16) and Brazil (16). The United Kingdom will reduce voting-age to 16 at its next election.
If Australia allowed 16- and 17-year-old citizens to vote, another 600,000 or so Australians could participate in elections.
Australia’s strong democratic institutions and compulsory voting keep participation high by international standards.
Even so, several million people living in Australia go uncounted: because they cast an invalid vote, because they fail to turn out or because Australia does not let them vote at all.
As a result, Australia only sees as much democratic participation as some countries without compulsory voting. Australia’s representative democracy is not as representative as it could be.
