The Australian Greens support efforts to strengthen the integrity of elections, but do not believe that the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Integrity of Elections) Bill 2021 (the Bill) in its current form achieves that objective.
Scrutiny of the ballot count
The Bill identifies an important issue regarding the transparency of the Senate ballot count—an issue that has consistently been raised in submissions to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.
Australia has an electoral system to be proud of and there is no evidence of widespread inaccuracies in the current count. Notwithstanding these current strengths, greater transparency leads to greater public trust that electoral processes are robust and best practice. Improving transparency and scrutiny of the ballot count will help Australia to avoid recent international experiences where a lack of transparency and doubt has been weaponised to undermine confidence in election outcomes.
However, the majority of submissions confirm that the solutions proposed by the Bill for additional software audits will not effectively address electoral transparency or improve public confidence in electoral outcomes.
The review of the ACT 2020 election recommended a routine statistical audit at the conclusion of each election, undertaken by an independent reviewer in the presence of scrutineers, to bolster public faith in the electoral process. Associate Professor Teague’s submission on the Bill confirms that this is the preferred approach:
Unfortunately, there is no equivalent way to double-check the Senate scanning process, because that would require access to the paper ballots from which the digitized preferences are derived. The aim of a post-election audit is to do this double-checking in the presence of scrutineers, so that scrutineers can verify the results and assess the rate of error.
She notes the Bill does not require randomised ballot selection, publication of the audit report or finalisation of the audit before the time for challenging an election result lapses. The ANAO also noted the significant resourcing challenges it would face in taking on the additional role proposed by the Bill. These deficiencies in the Bill could actually undermine public confidence in the audit process.
Mr Rajeev Gore also questioned the need for third party audits of complex vote-counting software, recommending instead that software vendors be required to publish verifiable proof of the accuracy of its scanning solutions. This could be included in criteria for a successful tender for a government contract to provide electoral software.
The Australian Greens recently proposed amendments to introduce a robust post-election audit of paper Senate ballots. We will continue to advocate for those changes.
Voter ID
The government and other conservative parties routinely raise the spectre of voter fraud to undermine electoral outcomes, but the reality is that there is no evidence to suggest that voter fraud is a significant issue in Australia. As Professor Graeme Orr has noted, ‘Voter ID in Australia is a solution in search of a problem’.
Associate Professor Teague notes that the provisions of the Bill requiring voter identification ‘may do considerable harm by wrongly excluding eligible voters’.
The Australian Human Rights Commission also raised concern that the Bill:
… has been introduced without proper regard to the existing safeguards against multiple voting and their effectiveness, and without proper consideration of the adverse impacts that the Bill is likely to have on participation in elections.
The Australian Greens have long opposed voter identification requirements given the serious risk that it would disenfranchise many citizens, including First Nations voters, homeless or itinerant voters, and voters escaping domestic violence. This remains our view.
The recent changes made by the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Offences and Preventing Multiple Voting) Act 2021 allow the AEC to identify voters suspected of multiple voting and require their future ballots to be cast by declaration. This reform is sufficient to address any perceived risk of multiple voting, and the further changes proposed by the Bill are unwarranted.
Further reforms
There are many things that should be done to improve the integrity of election campaigns – capping donations and election spending, stronger rules to prevent party campaigning being disguised as government advertising and paid for by the taxpayer, preventing pork barrelling of government grants, requiring truth in political advertising, and establishing a strong national integrity commission.
The Australian Greens will continue to campaign for all these reforms to ensure Australians can have confidence that future elections are conducted with integrity.
Senator Larissa Waters
Greens Senator for Queensland