Genealogy Chat

My cousin attended a family history seminar last week run by her local library in Brisbane and was told if searching electoral rolls in Australia that the Commonwealth (National) rolls are searchable by name and the state ones by address.

Nudge.

Some further info sent to me by another member of GRU with permission to post is as follows - ' have searched the electoral rolls on numerous occasions for people, is all computerised. The local electoral offices only have those enrolled in that electorate, but the main offices in the capitals of the States have those enrolled Australia wise. You search by State, type in the name (full name or just surname) and those names will come up on the screen complete with address.' Hope this may also be of assisstance to members.

You can go into any Commonwealth Electoral Office and peruse the Electoral Roll on a public access terminal. I went last year and no-one asked why I wanted to look, just enter a state and a name and it will show you all enrolled, by name, address and electorate. I went to Parramatta, no appointment needed. We have changed electorates, but not to the one I thought, so it was a useful check to look up my own name. Older Electoral rolls are on microfiche at the NSW State Library, but in groupings of Federal Electorate, so you have to have some idea where the person(s) might have lived. Di

Hi The current electoral rolls for the whole of Australia (all States and Territories) is now on line and can be accessed from any State Electoral Office anywhere in Australia. All you have to do is put in the name on the public access computer and search State by State and Territory...and all the names and addresses come up. I've been a few times lately to check for GR members... I am getting to know the girls that work there quite well :-) Just one thing... we are having a General Election this year so the Electoral Offices are gearing up to get everyones names down (so the roll is up to date) as voting is compulsory in Australia Cheers Gerry