Australia is among a handful of countries in the world where voting is compulsory.

While this may be considered a good thing, confusion sets in when voters cast their ballots — especially for immigrants voting for the first time.

While members of Australia’s large Chinese and South Asian communities are keen to play their part in the electoral process, they find, as many Australians do, that the voting system can be daunting and confusing.

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A recent survey of first generation Chinese and South Asian migrants found that more than half said they lacked political literacy to make an informed choice at the ballot box.

Australia’s voting system is by proportional representation, where a candidate who gets 40 percent of the vote could still lose to one with 35 percent once preferences from other parties are distributed.

In some elections, ballot papers have had up to 100 candidates which need to be numbered in order of preference.

For example, if a Labor candidate is number 20 on the ballot paper the voter needs to put 1 in the candidates’ box and fill the rest in order of preference. A missing number or a repeated number means the ballot is spoiled and is not counted.

Fan Yang, a research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s law school and one of those involved in the research, said for many Australians the voting system is straightforward. But for migrants voting for the first time, it can be very confusing.

“Especially if you come from a country where voting is not compulsory,” she told the China Daily.

Agreeing, Wayne Wong, who immigrated from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region a few years ago, told China Daily, “I voted in the last election. But I don’t think my vote counted for much because I only ticked one name. I have since found out a tick doesn’t count.”

For several years Fan, along with colleague Sukhmani Khorana from the University of New South Wales, has been looking into Australia’s voting system and how it impacts on migrants.

Their latest survey was conducted on first generation Chinese and South Asian migrants. About half of those polled said they lacked political literacy and were thus unable to make an informed choice.

“This gap in understanding among newer migrant communities has allowed for the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation,”  Khorana, an expert on migrant and refugee communities in Australia, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Aug 6.

According to Fan, the results showed that more than 50 percent of those Chinese surveyed said they did not fully understand how the Australian voting system operates while just under half of the South Asian respondents said the same thing.

Fan noted that for their research, Chinese migrants were based on their cultural background rather than nationality, so they included, for example, Chinese from Singapore and Malaysia.

She said Chinese and South Asian communities are rapidly growing in Australia.

According to the 2021 census, 1.39 million Australian residents identified themselves as having Chinese ancestry, accounting for 5.5 percent of Australia’s total population.

Those of Indian ancestry comprised 3.1 percent of the population. There was no figure for South Asians as a group. Fan said migrants from China and South Asia who were born in Australia prefer to see themselves as Australian rather than identifying with any specific ethnic group.

Their research found Chinese and South Asian communities displayed “varying” degrees of political participation — from actively running political campaigns as candidates to taking part in political events such as petitions and demonstrations.

When deciding whom to vote for, their research showed both Chinese and South Asian migrants priorities policies and the social and political background of candidates, Fan noted.

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Chinese respondents also consider what the candidates say about China and their related political preferences. South Asian respondents pay more attention to the candidate’s reputation.

Fan said what was interesting was the fact that shared ethnicity with a candidate “plays a minimal role in political decision-making”.

Both Chinese and South Asian communities reported social exclusion from Australian mainstream society and a lack of shared concerns with non-migrant cohorts as common obstacles to their political engagement, the survey said.

Contact the writer at karlwilson@chinadailyapac.com