To the casual observer, the neutrality of the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) should be scrutinised.
It was first the Commission’s sponsored advertisements which ran earlier this year on its social media accounts—paid for, of course, by the Australian taxpayer.
One such advertisement features an Aboriginal man pointing to an image of the Australian continent, which itself appears Aboriginal in aesthetic.
The smiling Aboriginal man wears face paint and a black t-shirt imprinted with the refrain, “Our Voice, Our Future.”
“Get Ready To Vote, Enrol Now,” is the advertisement’s official caption.
That was back in May, about five months ago.
Then, in August, it emerged that the AEC would accept voters’ ballots that displayed ticks (✓) as responses, but not crosses (x).
The contention by the Commission is that voters who tick their ballot papers make clear their voting intent, whereas voters who cross their ballot papers do not.
Voting intention is dealt with under section 93(8) of the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984.
Contention arises, however, in that section 24 of the same act clearly states that formal votes must be marked with either a YES or a NO in the box provided on the ballot paper.
In 1999, during the republic referendum of that year, the Australian Monarchist League’s Philip Benwell took the issue to the Federal Court, arguing—rightly—that the Commission was contravening section 24 of the Referendum Act.
The Federal Court under Justice Ronald Sackville dismissed the case; claiming not a legal defence but rather a logistical one, he argued the case had been brought too close to the actual day of the referendum.
The issue, perhaps unsurprisingly, has not since been revisited legally.
Why Do We Still Have Early Voting?
Another issue with the vote has been the purple signage of the Yes campaign.Incidentally, the legitimacy of early voting, is in and of itself, questionable.
A residue policy of the pandemic years, early voting was once limited to the elderly and the miscellaneous.
Now, anyone and everyone can take advantage of early voting, and so, in essence, elections and referendums are now fortnightly affairs.
This is not right; two weeks is a long time in politics, and if constituents cast their votes too early then they are not able to react democratically to the inevitable revelations that emerge towards a campaign’s end.
Moreover, how much does it now cost the AEC in salaries and resources to administer indiscriminate early voting?
These questions should be asked, but, for whatever reason, aren’t.
The Yes campaign’s purple signs are a slightly more academic matter to deal with.
I have worked on state elections that employ optional preferential voting in the past; the Liberal Party runs greyscale corflute signs that ask voters only to number one box, while the Labor Party has run greyscale corflutes that ask voters to number every box—these corflutes both look similar to official AEC signage.
The Yes campaign has employed what we might deem to be not a very gentlemanly tactic, but it is a tactic that boasts precedent all the same.
Where I think we may be alarmed, however, is in the AEC’s initial, seemingly nonchalant response to the Yes campaign over their purple signs, which seemed only to escalate as public pressure mounted in the media.
Let us not forget that this is the same AEC that sued former MP Craig Kelly in the Federal Court—and resoundingly lost—because it claimed the authorisations on Mr. Kelly’s corflutes were not clearly visible.
The AEC’s hierarchs, clearly, can march to war if they so choose.
Breaching Vote Integrity
For me, the AEC’s most outrageous moment came last week.The Commission’s official account on X (formerly known as Twitter) posted the following:
“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.”
If your mouth has dropped to the floor, you’re not alone.
The Commission continued: “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.”
Sometimes I forget I’m living in Australia.
This is the official government agency that is supposed to scrutinise free and fair elections in our democracy.
Just who, exactly, authored this sentiment?
Further, the AEC should move to immediately condemn these comments and reassure the Australian public that it is, in fact, a neutral and legitimate organisation capable of overseeing the people’s will.
If the Commission does not act to rectify the errors of its ways then its reputation, which as far as I can tell is already floundering, may be irredeemable.
Over the course of the referendum, Australians must remain vigilant and continue to closely observe the conduct of the AEC.
This nation cannot, under any circumstances, usher in a culture of fraudulent voting—that would be, and has proven throughout history to be, democratic suicide.
