Parliamentary Elections
“Bribery is carried on to a greater or lesser extent in
every election, in every state in the Commonwealth” -
W.M.(Billy) Hughes
First Commonwealth Electoral Bill 1902
“Almost
every union election in Australia is corrupt.” -
Marshall Cooke QC(Commissioner in Queensland Union Inquiry
1990-1992) |
Books on
Potential Fraud in Elections
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Corrupt Elections
1997
Identification on
Enrolment and Voting
Habitation reviews to date have been conducted by
door-knocks which in recent years are required to be done
every two years, and in theory blanket every address. In
practice some 10% will not be at home, and another
percentage will have moved as often as not to an unknown
address. As R. Patching DRO for Rankin said, no habitation
review had been completed since 1980. Those of 1984 and 1987
had been interrupted by an election.
The past
and present NSW Electoral Commissioners, R.Cundy and I.Dixon,
considered in their 1988 report that ‘there is no certainty
they will ever be detected.’ Trefor Owens, Victorian
Director for the Australian Electoral Commission in 1989
said the names of many people who had left their address
several years earlier, had not been removed by audit and
review activity and had been allowed to cast a vote in the
1987 election (Hansard
H. of Reps 1.6.1989).
60,000 names were removed from the roll post-election.
Subdivisional Structure of the
Electoral System
The two primary reasons for
the subdivisions of electoral divisions were to furnish the
building blocks for redistribution, and to reduce
electorates to neighbourhood units to discourage
manipulation and fraud of the voting system
(The declaration of the Hobart
Premiers’ Conference 1904).
Subdivisions remained the
basis for redistribution until 1984 when they were de
facto abolished. The new Australian Electoral Commission
simply ceased to print any subdivisional rolls and proceeded
to plan all future administrative processes solely on the
basis of divisional rolls. However, as this was not
reflected in the Commonwealth Electoral Act, the latter is
still constructed on the basis subdivisions exist.
Safeguards against fraud and
forgery in voting
The State Electoral Officers
spoke from years of experience when they declared in their
1902 report to the Commonwealth that subdivisions were a
vital ‘safeguard against fraud and impersonation.’ The Royal
Commission on Commonwealth Law and Administration 1914-1918
agreed. Moreover the grouping of small subdivisions would
facilitate alignment of Commonwealth and State
redistributions..
The NSW
Commission of Messrs Cundy and Dixon in 1988 recommended
that electors’ names should only appear on only one roll for
a designated polling place per subdivision as in Canada and
the USA..In the same year the Australian Electoral
Commissioner, Dr. Hughes, recommended the same solution if
‘multiple voting is a significant problem and a threat to
the integrity of elections.’
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