The election could be compromised if this is true. I wondered the same thing myself when I saw the AEC ad stating you HAVE to vote for 6 parties above the line… my immediate thought was ‘that’s going to force everyone to include one of the major parties in their preferences… that sounds like it was intentional.’
Well thanks to Larry Pickering I now know that it’s not just intentional, but it may well be intentional misinformation coming from the AEC, paid for by the taxpayer, concerning one of our most important democratic rights… voting. To be clear, this may not be a case of fraud or intentional misinformation, it may be a case of badly written or badly interpreted laws, but the net effect is that we have the AEC knowingly distributing information which is not correct, and prejudices the voting system towards certain parties at the expense of others.
Lets remember that the AEC are the ones who are supposed to ensure the integrity of the voting process, are supposed to be completely impartial, not just between the major parties, but also completely impartial when it comes to the minor parties as well! If they are knowingly spreading incorrect information about senate voting, which knowingly will benefit the major parties, we have a serious problem. Even if they can argue their hands are tied, this is, as they say, a Big F*****g Deal.
If a minor party challenges the election results in court, then a whole new senate election may need to be held. Worse, if the AEC cannot be trusted to be impartial and have absolute integrity around the publicising of the new senate voting rules, then how can we be sure of their integrity in any other area?
Full credit to Larry Pickering for pulling on the thread to see where it led. I wondered the same things, but didn’t follow it up, so props to Larry.
Please spread this far and wide. If we don’t get a correction from the AEC before election time then the senate election may be invalid, and the big parties will be laughing in their lattes as they abuse the electoral system to their advantage.
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I have been complaining about the Senate electoral system for years. The Hawke government introduced above-the-line voting in 1984, assuming (probably correctly) that the majority of voters incapable of counting higher than 1 would vote Labor. But the law of unintended consequences kicked in, meaning labyrinthine deals between minor parties influence not only the size and composition of the cross-bench, but also control of the entire Upper House.
It was a mistake. What they should have done back then was not introduce above-the-line voting, but greatly simplify below-the-line. The scrapping of the old 90% rule, reducing it to the number of seats up for election, is a positive step (though Bob Day argues it is unconstitutional, as the population of unexhausted votes may not represent a significant majority of electors). But people who cannot count to six (or twelve in a double-dissolution) probably should not be forced to vote anyway. In any case, the reform to below-the-line voting makes above-the-line voting redundant. Either it, or compulsory voting, must go.
What a stupid story? What are the rules on voting, what is incorrect and why is it Fraud? Please explain
The actual reality of the rules on voting are that you can vote for as few or as many parties / people as you like. If you vote for 1 party only, then that 1 vote is counted. If you vote for 3, then all three are counted. The AEC’s statement that you ‘must’ vote for 6 is incorrect.
Where this becomes possible election fraud is the fact that the AEC have admitted that they know this information is not correct, and they have admitted that they know that spreading this incorrect information will have the effect of favoring larger parties over smaller ones.
So to summarise, if the OP that I linked to is correct, and the phone call he says happened did actually happen, then the AEC are knowingly spreading misinformation about voting for the benefit of some parties over others. That’s where it becomes election fraud.