Editors’ Note: Leila Clarke is the ANUSA Welfare Officer. You can view the opposing view to Leila’s arguments here.

Representatives from some of the universities mentioned in this article challenge the representation of their system as “above-the-line”.

ANUSA’s voting system is among the most complex of any student union in Australia. In the 2025 ANUSA election, students wanting to fully participate were required to vote in 14 ballots. For the average student, who isn’t passionate about  student politics (or “stupol”), this system is inaccessible. This is all too clear in the  results: fewer than 10% of students voted for the President, and even less for other positions. 

In the upcoming ANUSA Annual General Meeting on 20 May, I am proposing reforms to ANUSA’s election regulations to fix this, including the introduction of above-the-line voting. This voting system is used in a majority of student unions and the Australian Senate.

Why are we actually doing this?

If ANUSA is to continue delivering services, supporting activism, and expanding how it supports students, it needs to be in the strongest possible position when dealing with the university. An example of why this is vital is this years’ funding negotiations that ANUSA will soon enter. Without a credible democratic mandate, the leverage of students for these kinds of negotiations is weakened before they even begin.

Low turnout also creates an internal problem. If only a small minority of students are voting, ANUSA’s policies and priorities risk becoming disconnected from the broader student body. The best way to ensure ANUSA remains responsive to the needs and wants of all ANU students is to ensure that all ANU students can participate easily in elections.

Above-the-line voting is a straightforward and practical way to achieve this. It reduces unnecessary barriers to participation, makes voting more intuitive, and encourages broader engagement from students who currently feel shut out of the process.

ANUSA is also an outlier among major Australian universities. Most other student unions use above-the-line voting systems, including the University of Sydney, UNSW, University of Melbourne, Monash, and the University of Technology Sydney. ANUSA being one of the few unions that doesn’t shows how far behind our election system has fallen. 

If ANUSA is to remain a genuinely representative body, its elections must be accessible to all students, not just those already tuned into student politics.

Why these reforms improve democracy

Last year, above the line voting was introduced for general representatives and delegates to the National Union of Students. The proposed changes will create consistency, and there is a clause that all preferences have to be publicly presented. This ensures transparency in the preference order of all tickets. 

ANUSA has already explored a range of options to increase voter engagement in its annual elections. Currently, ANUSA communicates information about elections to the student body when they commence, and provides a voting explainer to assist students in understanding the process. However, these measures have not been enough to significantly increase voter turnout.

These changes are intended to improve engagement among international, postgraduate, and HDR students, who are often less engaged with student politics and may find the current voting process unnecessarily complex. By reducing the number of ballots, students will be able to express their preferences more easily.

Importantly, these changes do not “lock out” independents or “minority” tickets, Here’s why:

1. Voters are still free to vote for independent candidates below-the-line, which is how ANUSA elections have operated in the past.
2. Smaller or “minority” tickets receive equal visibility to larger tickets on the ballot because all tickets are listed above the line.
3. The current ANUSA election regulations place independent candidates at a disadvantage, particularly those who are not familiar with the complexity of the existing system. At the moment, many ‘Ungrouped’ candidates are at a disadvantage because they aren’t aware that they can run on or form a ticket. For example, Malakai for ANUSA was a ticket in last year’s election because the candidate knew to run on a ticket.  These reforms will actually level the playing field for independents by creating a fairer, more transparent voting system, where all independents are given a clearer option to register as a ticket and appear above the line. 
4. The more people who engage with  ANUSA elections, the greater awareness of the voting system there will be. By making the voting system more accessible, these reforms will in fact encourage a larger number of students to register as candidates, including as independent candidates, in the annual election. Information is democratic when it’s freely available. 

Contrary to others’ claims,this is not a “front-page voting” system. That term implies the above-the-line voting option would be placed first or given preferential prominence. The reforms do not dictate how the ballot will be displayed. That is a matter for the Returning Officer to determine, and ANUSA is committed to ensuring the voting interface is presented in the fairest and most neutral way possible.

There is also a broad coalition of support for these regulatory changes, with both Labor factions and Socialist Alternative all expressing support.

Debunking the myths of above-the-line voting

These regulation changes have been the subject of a misinformation campaign which is highly problematic and damaging to the transparency of ANUSA. Let’s clear some things up so we can focus on what these reforms actually do. 

These changes will enable students to express preference between tickets running candidates for the ANUSA executive, academic representatives and college representatives, National Union of Students delegates and general representatives, across a total of 4 ballots. A “ticket” refers to a group of candidates who run together as a team under a shared platform. 

The proposed changes simply provide students the option to quickly preference ‘above-the-line.’This will not prevent students from voting ‘below-the-line’ to express preferences for individual candidates. In other words, students will still be able to vote as they currently can, with the existing system presented clearly alongside the new above-the-line option, giving students full control over how they choose to vote.

It is also important to note that voting processes for autonomous departments will not be affected by these reforms in any way. While most choose not to run in the annual ANUSA elections held each September, where they do, they are elected on a separate autonomous ballot. These reforms therefore do not apply to department elections, and departmental autonomy remains entirely unaffected.

The Environment Collective, the only ANUSA department that runs in the ANUSA general elections each year, was consulted extensively on these changes. Through that process, it was agreed that they would be excluded from the above-the-line voting system, consistent with their preference.

Some concern was raised that these reforms may be in breach of the ANU Governance Rule 2023. This is incorrect. Voting for University Council members will not be included in any above-the-line voting ballot and will remain unchanged. It is therefore misleading to suggest that these reforms alter University Council election processes. Framing it in this way functions as a scare tactic and risks spreading misinformation, which is highly misleading for voters. 

At its core, these reforms are simple: ANUSA should be easier for students to engage with, not harder. Above-the-line voting will make elections more accessible, more transparent, and more representative — without removing choice. If ANUSA is serious about representing all students, then its democracy must be designed for all students to participate in.

Please come out on Wednesday and vote in support of these changes!