Fed: Prisoner mounts High Court challenge to jail vote ban

AAP General News (Australia)
04-25-2007
Fed: Prisoner mounts High Court challenge to jail vote ban

MELBOURNE, April 25 AAP - A Victorian prisoner will challenge in the High Court laws
that ban jail inmates from voting.

The case, brought by Vickie Lee Roach, 48, will be heard in June and could eventually
win back the right to vote for Australia's prisoners, Fairfax newspapers report today.

Roach is being held in the Dame Phyllis Frost Women's Prison at Deer Park.

She was jailed for at least four years in 2004 for negligently causing serious injury
in a car accident, the report said.

Roach would argue that Commonwealth Electoral Act provisions which barred prisoners
from voting in federal elections were unconstitutional, Fairfax said.

The ban was introduced last year in legislative changes that shortened the period people
can enrol to vote after an election is called from seven days to three days, and required
them to provide proof of identity when enrolling or updating their enrolment.

Previously, only prisoners serving sentences of more than five years were barred from voting.

Barristers Ron Merkel QC and Michael Pearce SC, leading corporate law firm Allens Arthur
Robinson and the non-profit Human Rights Law Resource Centre were acting free of charge
for Roach, Fairfax said.

Roach's High Court application said the laws breached sections of the constitution
that said parliament should be "directly chosen by the people", and unlawfully breached
implied constitutional freedoms of political participation and political communication.

AAP jrd/srp/cp

KEYWORD: VOTE

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