Access to the Roll
About the electoral roll
The NSW electoral roll is a list of electors' names and addresses that is used to determine who can vote at elections.
A joint enrolment procedure exists between the State and the Commonwealth to facilitate exchange of information for the purposes of preparing, updating and revising rolls of electors. Authorisation to collect enrolment information is contained in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Act 1912.
Access to the NSW electoral roll
Under state and local government electoral law, organisations and people with access to electoral information are:
- Members of the Parliament of New South Wales
- groups and candidates participating in the electoral process
- registered political parties
- state agencies such as NSW Police, Sheriff’s Office, Independent Commission Against Corruption, Office of State Revenue, Department of Fair Trading and NSW Crime Commission
- certain health screening programs – within National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines.
Members of the public can inspect the NSW electoral roll and the residential roll for council areas at our office.
The non-residential roll and the roll of occupiers and rate paying lessees for Local Government election purposes are made available for public inspection during office hours at the relevant council office.
Electoral rolls are not available for sale, and it is illegal to copy an electoral roll. Heavy penalties apply to any organisation or person who uses electoral enrolment information for a non-approved purpose.
The principles outlined in the Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 are observed by us in managing the roll, as documented in the 'NSWEC Policy and Guidelines for Disclosure of Electoral Enrolment Information', which is available under Policy documents on this website.
