FAQ - Enrolment

Updated 24 Aug 2021

To enrol, follow this link to the electoral enrolment form at the Australian Electoral Commission website.

Enrolment and voting are compulsory if you are eligible. If you change your address or name details, you must update your enrolment.

Go online at aec.gov.au to:

You are eligible to enrol to vote at ACT Legislative Assembly elections if you:
  • Are 16 years of age or over; and
  • Are an Australian citizen (or a British subject who was on a Commonwealth of Australia electoral roll on 25 January 1984); and
  • Have lived in the ACT for at least one month.

Although you may enrol at 16, you cannot vote until you turn 18.

Residents of Jervis Bay, Wreck Bay or Norfolk Island cannot vote in ACT Legislative Assembly elections even though they can enrol for Commonwealth elections for the ACT.

You need to complete and lodge an enrolment form to enrol for the first time, or to update your enrolment after you have changed your name or address.

You can do this online on the Australian Electoral Commission's website.

Yes. Australian citizens who are 18 years or older have the right to enrol and vote. In Australia the law says that if you are entitled to be enrolled then you must enrol to vote in Federal and State or Territory elections and referendums.

Yes. If you are 17 years old and otherwise entitled to enrol, you can enrol online.

If you turn 18 on or before election day, you will be able to vote.

If you will not turn 18 on or before election day, you will not be eligible to vote at the election. But we would still encourage you to enrol so that you are eligible to vote at the earliest opportunity.

We encourage all 16, 17 and 18 year olds living in the ACT to enrol now. You are eligible!

You have to be an Australian citizen and have a citizenship certificate number first before you can enrol. The Department of Home Affairs issues citizenship certificates.

The only way to have your name appear on the electoral roll without your address is if you can show that having your address on the roll places the safety of you or your family at risk. If this is the case, then you can apply for silent enrolment. You can apply online on the Australian Electoral Commission's website. You must submit a statutory declaration, witnessed by a qualified witness, with your application.

If you cannot sign an enrolment form because of a physical disability, another person can sign on your behalf. You must obtain a doctor's certificate to show that you cannot sign your name. Contact the ACT Electoral Commission or the Australian Electoral Commission for more details or an application form.

Note: If you are enrolling in this way you may also be eligible to apply to become a registered general postal voter, which means you will automatically be sent postal ballot papers whenever an election is called so that you can vote at home.

Registration as a general postal voter means that you will automatically be sent postal voting material as soon as possible after early voting commences for each election.

You can apply for registration as a general postal voter if:

  • You are a patient in a hospital, nursing home or similar institution that is not provided with mobile polling facilities and you are too ill or infirm to travel;
  • You live at home and you are too ill or infirm to travel;
  • You are caring for a seriously ill or infirm person;
  • You are serving a prison sentence of less than 3 years, on remand or in periodic detention, for federal elections;
  • You have a physical incapacity which prevents you from signing your name and have provided upon enrolling (or can provide) a doctor's certificate to this effect;
  • You live more than 20 kilometres by the nearest practicable route from a polling place;
  • You are registered as an overseas elector;
  • Your address is not shown on the roll because you are a silent elector;
  • Your religious beliefs prevent you from attending a polling place;.
  • You are a member of the defence forces, or a defence civilian serving outside Australia; or
  • You are an Australian Federal Police officer or staff member serving outside Australia.

For more details or access to an application form go to the AEC's General Postal Voter information.

If your trip is a short one, you are already enrolled and you are returning to your enrolled address, you can register as 'temporarily absent' by submitting an Overseas notification form. Alternatively, you may contact the ACT Electoral Commission or the Australian Electoral Commission to advise the details of your trip. If sending an email, please include your full name, date of birth, enrolled address, and dates of departure and return (approximate if exact dates are not known). Your name will be kept on a register of temporary overseas electors for the next ACT or federal election.

If you are going overseas for six years or less and intending to return to Australia, you can register as an overseas elector. This means your name will stay on the roll while you are overseas. It also gives you the option of automatically receiving a postal vote for any ACT or federal elections taking place during your absence. Contact the ACT Electoral Commission or the Australian Electoral Commission for more details or complete a Registration as an overseas elector form from the AEC's website.

Note: you must intend to return to the ACT to be eligible to vote in ACT Legislative Assembly elections.

If you are NOT already enrolled (but would be eligible if you were in Australia) and are living overseas, you may enrol from outside Australia.

You may enrol from outside Australia if you:

  • Left Australia less than three years ago;
  • Are an Australian citizen aged 18 years or older; and
  • Intend to resume living in Australia within six years of the date of your departure from Australia.

You cannot enrol for an overseas address. Instead you must enrol in the electorate you were entitled to enrol in before you left Australia.

Contact the ACT Electoral Commission or the Australian Electoral Commission for more details or an application form.

If you are intending to return to your enrolled address, you are entitled to maintain your enrolment at that address. To ensure that you remain on the roll at that address while you are away, contact the ACT Electoral Commission or the Australian Electoral Commission and let us know how long you expect to be away.

If you do not intend returning to your enrolled address, you must enrol at your new address when you have lived there for one month. If you have been posted overseas you may apply to be registered as an overseas elector.

If you are going to work in the Antarctic (including Heard Island, McDonald Island and Macquarie Island), you may be eligible to enrol as an 'Antarctic elector'. Contact the ACT Electoral Commission or the Australian Electoral Commission for more details or an application form.

If you are in the Antarctic on election day, or in transit on a ship to or from the Antarctic, special arrangements can be made to allow you vote. As this will require the electronic transmission of individual vote details, and because of the small number of electors involved, there may be a limited loss of secrecy of individual votes. For this reason, voting in the Antarctic is not compulsory.

It is also the intention of the ACT Electoral Commission to provide an online voting service to electors who are overseas, including Antarctica. Contact Elections ACT for more information.

If you have no permanent home, you may be eligible to enrol as a person with no fixed address. For further information visit the Australian Electoral Commission's website.

This category of enrolment does not apply to long term travellers within Australia who have a permanent address they intend to return to. For further information about enrolment in this situation, visit the AEC's information page.

Yes. A person cannot enrol if:

  • Because of unsound mind, he or she is incapable of understanding the nature and significance of enrolment and voting;
  • He or she has been convicted of treason and has not been pardoned; or
  • Under the migration law he or she is the holder of a temporary entry permit or is an illegal entrant.

A person cannot enrol for federal elections if he or she has been convicted and is under sentence for 3 years or longer under Commonwealth, State or Territory law. However a prisoner is eligible to enrol and vote in ACT Legislative Assembly elections regardless of the length of their sentence.

An elector may be removed from the roll where a registered medical practitioner has certified in writing that the person is incapable of understanding the nature and significance of enrolment and voting because of unsound mind. You should complete the Objection claim form, giving details of the elector's full name, date of birth and enrolled address and attaching a medical practitioner's certificate. Forward this to the Australian Electoral Commission. Doing so will ensure that the elector does not receive a notice for failing to vote.

In time, the Commission receives notification of everyone who dies from Births, Deaths and Marriages, and his/her name is automatically removed from the electoral roll.

Alternatively, you may notify the Australian Electoral Commission online or phone the AEC or Elections ACT to provide this information.

Yes. The roll is available for public inspection at the office of the ACT Electoral Commission or the Australian Electoral Commission. The roll is not available on the internet for privacy reasons. You can also check your own enrolment online on the AEC website.

Please call 6205 0033 to book an appointment to inspect the roll as our office is currently closed due to the public health situation.

Please note, provision of the electoral roll for public inspection is for electoral integrity purposes. The Electoral Act provides for the right of inspection but also states that this right does not extend to the right to copy or take an extract from the roll.

No. Rolls cannot be purchased from the Australian Electoral Commission or the ACT Electoral Commission. The Electoral Act prohibits the selling of the roll.

If you are unsure if you are correctly enrolled, you can check your enrolment details online, on the Australian Electoral Commission's website.

Alternatively, you may contact the ACT Electoral Commission or the Australian Electoral Commission to check your enrolment details.

When making such an enquiry, you will be asked to provide all the details about your enrolment. We can only provide you with confirmation of the details you have supplied. No further information can be given.

If you are told that you are not currently enrolled for the address for which you claim enrolment, you should submit an enrolment form to update your details. You may be on the electoral roll for a previous address.

Unfortunately Elections ACT is unable to provide a roll searching service, or undertake research about current and past residents of Australia.

The ACT Electoral Roll is a public document and can be viewed in person at Elections ACT's office. If you are interested in viewing the electoral roll for areas outside of the ACT, you can do so electronically at the Australian Electoral Commission's Divisional Office of Canberra, Bean and Fenner.  You may not copy, record or photograph any information from the electoral roll with any electronic device.

Full sets of historical electoral rolls are held as part of the collection at the National Library of Australia and at the State Library in each Australian State.  Further information is available from the National Library’s website. The National Library also provides a list of private researchers.

For information on organisations that can help with family tracing, visit the Salvation Army website.

Electorate boundaries (with the exception of the suburb of Kambah) follow suburb boundaries in the ACT. Go to the "Which electorate am I in?" page to find your suburb. This will tell you which electorate you are in.

Following are enrolment figures for the past 5 elections.

Number of people on the electoral roll
Electorate2020 Election 2016 Election 2012 Election 2008 Election 2004 Election 2001 Election 1998 Election 1995 Election
Molonglo*   108 194 103 719 95 548 91 328 87 237 81 883
Brindabella 62 217 53 614 72 368 71 394 65 279 64 020 61 042 58 327
Ginninderra 63 844 54 585 76 140 68 358 65 271 63 267 56 969 56 749
Kurrajong 59 422 59 010       
Murrumbidgee 59 934 57 058       
Yerrabi 60 583 58 895       
Total 306 000 283 162 256 702 243 471 226 098 218 615 205 248 196 959

* Molonglo no longer features as an electorate for ACT Legislative Assembly elections following the redistribution conducted prior to the 2016 ACT election

For data on current enrolment figures, please contact Elections ACT

More details on enrolment may be obtained from the Australian Electoral Commission, or contact the ACT Electoral Commission.