The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is gearing up for this year’s Federal election by contacting hundreds of thousands of Australians missing from the electoral roll and preparing to call out “fruit loop” politicians who undermine the electoral process.
During a briefing in Canberra, Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers said it was important for Australians to defend the integrity of the election, predicted to be in May, against any false or unsubstantiated claims made by candidates or politicians.
Commissioner Rogers said he hoped Australian candidates, and incumbent parliamentarians, would continue a tradition of respecting the system, rather than undermining it.
He said the AEC was there to ensure a fair election and had no interest in the winners and losers.
“We’ve got a bunch of disinterested bureaucrats who run (the election),” he said.
“I mean, disinterested, not uninterested. I’m using that deliberately.
“We love the process. We don’t care about the outcome.”
On the question of unhappy candidates declaring the system unfair, Commissioner Rogers said it would be “absolutely despicable and unbelievably poor form if any candidate does that.”
“If some fruit loop picked up what occurred in some overseas countries and tried that here, that would be incredibly disappointing,” Mr Rogers was reported in The Canberra Times.
“It would fundamentally change the nature of Australian elections where everyone accepts the result.”
Commissioner Rogers said there were hundreds of thousands of polling officials, who were never left alone with ballot papers, and every single vote was subject to a scrutineering process.
He encouraged Australians to ensure they were enrolled to vote and to update their enrolment information if they had moved house recently.
He said that despite Australia consistently delivering one of the highest enrolment rates in the world, there were about 560,000 people in danger of missing out on having their say in the 2022 Federal election.
“Since the previous Federal election in 2019, we’ve sent more than five million texts and emails to remind people to take enrolment action, and we’re now contacting another half a million eligible Australians,” the Commissioner said.
Information on updating voting enrolment details can be accessed at this PS News link.
