The Australian Electoral Commission has been forced to clarify that voting multiple times is illegal after they appeared to be encouraging it.
The commission tweeted on Tuesday …
“If someone votes at two different polling places within their electorate and places their formal vote in the ballot box at each polling place, their vote is counted.”
That tweet was viewed more than 800,000 times.
The Commission then followed it up with this …
“We cannot remove the vote from the count because, due to the secrecy of the ballot, we have no way of knowing which ballot paper belongs to which person. However, the number of double votes received is incredibly low, and usually related to mental health or age.”
So the AEC has advertised to every Australian that they can vote as many times as they like, and not get caught!
And how could they know that double voting is rare if, by their own admission, they cannot detect it?
It was only a Twitter pile-on that the AEC belatedly advised …
“Multiple voting is an offence. Real-time roll mark off occurs at all pre-poll centres and many polling day booths. All declaration votes are also subject to strict roll checks.”
Good to know.
Ironically, the AEC revealed they had warned NSW Labor MP Meryl Swanson after she had encouraged people on social media to “#voteoften”.
The AEC tweeted …
“We’ve been in touch with the MP’s office to discuss this. The post was edited swiftly to take that part out. Use of an often-misunderstood colloquial saying that shouldn’t have occurred and was amended.”
A colloquial saying? Where? In Venezuela?
This is just the latest in a series of missteps from the AEC in the lead up to the October 14 referendum.
Last week a woman told Melbourne’s 3AW that she had received multiple voting papers from the AEC, each with her name but with different numbers, after she applied online to be sent ballots for postal voting.
The AEC assured voters this was a computer glitch and unlikely to be repeated.
That was reassuring.
Last month the AEC declared - inexplicably - that while a tick would be counted as a ‘Yes’ vote at the referendum, a cross would not be counted as a ‘No’ vote.
The ‘Yes’ campaign cleverly (or should I say cynically) seized on this and began posting an infographic on social media showing how people might vote - with a tick or a cross.
No-one saw that coming. (Insert massive eye-roll here)
The AEC eventually contacted Yes23 about their misleading infographic. Which was, of course, the least the commission could do after setting up such a silly scenario in the first place.
And then the AEC had to contact the Yes campaign again about the colours in their advertising after it was revealed that signs outside early polling centres were using the same colour and font as the Australian Electoral Commission’s own signage.
The AEC advised the Yes Campaign that the signs might confuse voters into thinking that the Commission endorsed a ‘Yes’ vote.
You think?
The AEC didn’t advise that the signs be changed. Only that they be stationed a little further away from their own.
Which is odd, because when the Liberal Party created signage in a Melbourne electorate at the 2019 election using the same colours as the AEC, the Sydney Morning Herald called it a “massive rort” and the AEC demanded the signs be destroyed.
In a vote as contentious as the Voice to Parliament, you’d think the Australian Electoral Commission would be run by people other than work experience students.
The real issue at this year’s indigenous voice referendum is a question of principle: Will we abandon the egalitarian nature of Australian democracy?
Will we, in other words, join the crackpots of history by introducing into our Constitution the concept of racial preference that lies at the core of this referendum? Or will we defend the ideals of liberal democracy that emerged in revolutionary America and France?
We are being asked to give one racial group – and their descendants for all time – constitutionally guaranteed additional influence over all areas of public policy. If you tick the right race box you would gain political influence exceeding that enjoyed by every other Australian.
Some have argued that the voice would be merely symbolic; a benign way of showing solidarity with indigenous people by giving them a say on matters that affect them. Others have described it as a path to empowerment.
But that’s not the real story. This referendum is not about reconciliation. Nor is it about symbolism and being nice. It is about establishing a new institution of state that would permanently change our system of government.
It would require us to abandon equality of citizenship by giving constitutional standing to a race-based entity that could go beyond indigenous affairs and involve itself in all public policy debates.
Just a small thing, but in one of their Twitter replies yesterday, the AEC spelt "you're" as "your".
So unprofessional.
The AEC social media kiddies may be tech-savvy, but they seem to be lacking other competencies.
During the last Federal election I thought that some of the AEC's replies on Twitter seemed to me to be written by smart alecs.