The only part I saw that had the words religious in it was the following:
An elector who is registered as General Postal Voter will automatically be sent ballot papers as soon as practicable following the declaration of nominations for a federal election, or the issue of writ for a federal referendum.
An eligible elector only has to fill in a General Postal Vote application form once. Electors do not have to reapply. This is where a General Postal Vote application form differs from a Postal Vote Application. A Postal Vote Application is made available by the AEC on the announcement of an election and is only intended to be used for that electoral event.
An elector can apply to be registered as a General Postal Voter if they:
- live more than 20 kilometres from a polling place, including a place where mobile polling will be conducted;
- are a patient at a hospital or nursing home where polling will not take place, and because of serious illness or infirmity is unable to travel to a polling place
- are not in hospital but, due to serious illness or infirmity, are unable to travel from their home to a polling place;
- cannot travel to a polling place because they are caring for a person who is seriously ill or infirm;
- are detained in custody in prison or on remand awaiting trial;
- are registered as a silent elector; or
- are an elector whose religious beliefs, or membership of a religious order, preclude them from attending a polling place for all or most of the hours of polling.
I couldn't find anywhere where it says that one is absolved from voting due to their beliefs, etc... In the above statement, it seems that the matter is that one can apply to vote via the post, if one falls under any of the categories listed below it. This includes people that are unable to attend due to their religious convictions, that may coincide during the day that elections are held.
Also blondie, I apologise if I sounded negative with my comment regarding non-Australians. I have no ill-feelings towards anyone in this thread, at all.
It is just that I have had experiences in the past where people that are not qualified to give statements, base their comments on hearsay/comments only heard, and not verified, that have landed me in undesirable situations. For this reason, I am being pedantic about the source I gather my information from.
Having said that, I agree that the site would have been put up by Australians, as it is an Australian Government website. However, the more intricate details are what I am after, rather just plain quoting what is directly apparent. Sometimes things are not put out in the open for all to see, as for in this instance, it would in the interest of the Australian governing system, that everybody votes. However, by knowing which proverbial knobs to turn, and buttons to push, there may be a way to bypass voting, in Australia.
This is the information that I am after.
Whilst working for a company in the past, they had a product which was not advertised anywhere, yet they still had it. This product was only ever mentioned if the customer utterred certain trigger words. Otherwise, no one would be the wiser about it being available.
I hope you have a clearer understanding of why I stated what I did. Again, I appreciate your efforts in trying to get me my answer.
Warm Regards,
icer.
