Thursday, 5 October 2023

Australian Electoral Commission

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (09:55): Voting early and voting often seems to have taken on a whole new dimension in this referendum, because the AEC seems to have declared that:

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.

Members interjecting.

Bev McARTHUR: Absolutely. This is from the AEC. Further, the AEC is quoted as saying:

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.

Obviously.

However –

they say –

the number of double votes received is incredibly low …

Well, who can tell us it is incredibly low if they cannot detect whose vote it is? And this is incredible:

… and usually related to mental health or age.

So now they want to blame the disabled or the elderly for thwarting the electoral process. Now, this is an incredible situation, and the only way this is going to be detected is after the vote is counted. So how do we know that the vote is genuine when the AEC are admitting you can vote early and vote often as many times as you like?