In light of the upcoming postal plebiscite on same-sex marriage enrol-to-vote campaign co-ordinator Lachlan Hinds said the student team were helping their peers to check their enrolment details.

“Whilst there are a significant number of people who aren’t 18 yet, people do slip through the cracks and a lot of people don’t even realise that you can enrol when you are 16.” 

Some students believed they would be automatically added to the electoral roll when they turned 18, something Mr Hinds said was “quite concerning”.

“At the 2013 election almost half of all 18-year-olds were not enrolled to vote, so that was approximately 350,000 people which is a large proportion of the population,” he said.

“That’s four or five times the size of Launceston … and I read some analysis that said they could have affected up to 50 seats in parliament.”

Mr Hind said there were 98 students from Year 11 and 12 at Scotch who were not enrolled to vote and he hoped they would drop into the computer lab over the next three days to update their details.

“The youth voice is really not being heard as much as it could be compared to the older generational and we have as much of a stake, if not larger, in the policies being developed in our country than older people do.”

The electoral roll increased by 16,990 between August 8 and 14 according to the Australian Electoral Commission.

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