IS AUSTRALIA’S VOTING SYSTEM HONEST?

DO VOTE FRAUDS OCCUR?

GetUp has $30m in the bank and is the largest, organised voting manipulator in Australia

by Lex Stewart, former Chairman of Australians for Honest Elections

To the two questions above in the heading, our Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) would say “Yes and No”.

But my answers are the opposite – based on having scrutineered at every federal and state election since 1985, and having done paid work for six MPs (3 Canberra, 3 NSW) and voluntary work in various political Parties.

The AEC Electoral Commissioner is retired Army officer Tom Rogers, who worked for defence contractor Raytheon after leaving the military.

I worked as staffer for an MP who lost his seat in 1993 by 164 votes, and then we discovered 300 false enrolments on the Electoral Roll, plus other issues, including that Jehovah’s Witnesses did not receive their customary letter after the election because they did not vote.

A few years ago I arranged some meetings in Australia for UK Election Commissioner Richard Mawrey QC, who had jailed people from both sides of politics for Vote Frauds. 

Very few people have ever been prosecuted or even challenged in Australia, and our Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) operates a faulty system with numerous loopholes, and scant attention from Ministers, other MPs and journalists.

Richard Mawrey was aghast at what he saw of Australia’s voting systems and Electoral Agencies.  He said, “Due to the incentives, if vote fraud CAN occur due to loopholes, then it WILL occur.  And especially Australia’s postal vote system is a recipe for fraud.”

There is substantial incentive for Vote Frauds because the rewards are so huge – power, prestige, getting control of expenditure of taxpayers’ moneys, appointing your mates to various Boards and diplomatic postings etc.

To improve elections:-

  • vote in the Senate by numbering every square rather than one to six
  • do scrutineering – this means getting an AEC Form signed by a candidate. Do it after 6pm on election night, and if needed during subsequent days of re-counting.
  • Because over the years very few MPs have taken an interest in Vote Frauds (except Fred Nile and Pauline Hanson) then after this election heckle your MP that you want Voter ID introduced, so as to prevent Multiple Voting (AEC data show more than 36,686 in the 2016 election) and to prevent Voter Impersonation.

Bearing in mind that it is often difficult to gather enough evidence to prove Vote Frauds (granted that the AEC, Aust Federal Police are asleep), I could give numerous examples of Vote Frauds, but it would make this article too long.

A convenient one-page list of 17 cases of Vote Frauds was page two of a brief Submission by eminent Sydney lawyer James Bell to the parliamentary committee reviewing the 2019 federal election.  When his Submission appeared on the parliamentary website as number 53, the list on page two had been “redacted” i.e. blacked out!  In order to overcome this censorship, James’s list is presented below.

Some cases of Vote Frauds have been exposed by rare court cases or very rare government inquiries, e.g. the Shepherdson Inquiry, which led to the jailing of Karen Ehrman who said she was only a small bit player among many others involved in the ALP’s schemes.

ccc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-01/The-Shepherdson-Inquiry-Report-2001.pdf

The AEC has not operated the Electoral Roll with integrity, as shown by the five reports done by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO).

The Howard government asked the ANAO to do an audit of the AEC, and the report of 18 April 2002 titled “The Integrity of the Electoral Roll” raised serious concerns.

The ANAO report of 6 April 2004:- “progress by the AEC on implementing the recommendations has been slow…”

Their report of 6 April 2010 wrote, “The most significant long-term problem for the AEC remains the poor state of the Electoral Roll”.

Their 8 May 2014 report stated, “… the state of the Roll was the most significant long-term issue … and the AEC’s approaches … have become less effective , as well as … more costly”

Their fifth report on 4 November 2015 had some alarming things to say in its Overall Conclusion:-   “The actions taken by the AEC … have not adequately and effectively addressed the matters that led to the ANAO’s recommendations being made … The findings of this audit .. are in contrast to the advice provided by the AEC to the 2014 parliamentary committee that all recommendations … had been completed”

IN OTHER WORDS THE AEC TOLD LIES TO THE PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE!

And no Minister or MP or journalist bothered or cared to expose this AEC juggernaut, which is in practical effect unaccountable and renegade, operating a system full of loopholes.

Here is the list of cases of Vote Frauds in James Bell’s Submission to the parliamentary committee.  It includes cases where Vote Frauds were PROVEN to have occurred, but James (and I) are not claiming that the frauds were necessarily of sufficient magnitude to have affected the outcome.

  1.   Joan Chambers lost Ballarat South in 1988 by 104 votes, but many more than 104 fraudulent votes were subsequently found by the Electoral Authority
  2.   Bribie Island 1989 -Bob Bottom found underwater enrolments along a beachside street
  3.   Alasdair Webster MP lost Macquarie in 1993 by 164 votes
  4.   1993 Frank Tanti lost Mundingburra by 16 votes but won the court-ordered by-election
  5.   MP Larry Anthony lost Richmond in 2004 by 301 votes
  6.   Multiple voting in 2005 Werriwa by-election
  7.   Wollondilly in the March 2007 NSW State election – several Statutory Declarations described a busload going to vote at several polling booths, but the Electoral Commissioner refused to investigate
  8.   200 House of Reps ballot papers vanished in Epping West booth in Bennelong in 2007
  9.   BK photographed a suspicious man who voted three times in Coogee ~2007
  10.  VicB found 500 false enrolments in Kingsford Smith early 2013
  11.  Circa year 2000 BK, VB, PB found many false enrolments in Parramatta, perhaps 5,000
  12.  S Mirabella lost Indi in 2013 by 500 (1,000 ballots appeared)
  13.  1,370 ballot papers vanished in the WA senate election
  14.  MP Charles Casuscelli narrowly lost Strathfield in 2015 NSW
  15.  MP Chris Holstein narrowly lost Gosford in 2015 NSW
  16.  MP Louise Markus narrowly lost Macquarie in 2016, with Lex Stewart detecting a new method of Vote Fraud, plus observing an old method being used.
  17. Election 2016: Labor’s Cathy O’Toole wins Herbert by 37 votes …

Editor: It should be noted that this scribe has been writing about electoral fraud since 1987 when the Unions were able to get enough false names onto the roll to change the election result.. The AEC electronic roll was in its infancy and it had the original RAMNS system which was sub-standard at least, allowing many thousands of false names to stay on the roll unchecked. Indeed a staffer for former Senator Len Harris in 2004 was told by the then Electoral Commissioner that there were more than 400,000 names on the roll whose identity had not been checked.

In 1987 the incumbent Australian Labor Party, led by Prime Minister Bob Hawke, defeated the opposition Liberal Party of Australia, led by John Howard and the National Party of Australia led by Ian Sinclair. This was the first, and to date only, time the Labor Party won a third consecutive election.

Postal voting integrity is the biggest worry of the 2022 election.

Tom Rogers biography:

https://www.aspi.org.au/bio/tom-rogers