14 April 2022

COVID no excuse not to vote in this federal election

| Claire Fenwicke
Join the conversation
17
The 2022 federal election will be held Saturday 21 May.

The 2022 federal election will be held Saturday 21 May. Photo: AEC Images.

COVID-positive people will still have their voices heard this federal election, with the Australian Electoral Commission in the process of setting up a telephone voting option.

It will be for people who test positive on 19, 20 and 21 May.

“Postal voting goes up until the Wednesday (18 May) prior to election day, so those who are positive before then can apply for that,” AEC spokesperson Evan Ekin-Smyth said.

“It’s the final three days of voting – the Thursday, Friday and Saturday – that are of concern.”

The AEC is also currently speaking with health authorities to see if those who are deemed close contacts on election day can receive an exemption to head out and vote.

The telephone voting system will only be available to those who can prove they have tested positive to COVID and they will be bound by a legal declaration.

“Basically if you don’t need to use it, don’t. This is an emergency measure only,” Mr Ekin-Smyth said.

“The wait on the phone will likely be longer than the queue at any voting place.”

Electronic voting is not being considered, as there is currently no legislation allowing the AEC to do so.

“It’s not for us to deliver something we legally cannot do,” Mr Ekin-Smyth said.

READ ALSO Prime Minister calls election for 21 May as Canberra braces for a long campaign

Elections security expert at the ANU Associate Professor Vanessa Teague described the plan as a “last resort” for voters, and stressed the importance of in-person or postal voting.

“Obviously the security of phone voting isn’t as good as in-person voting, or even postal voting, as you can’t really verify that your vote is being transcribed in the way you asked for, and your anonymity is highly dependent on AEC processes that are hard to check,” she said.

“The main advantage is that the privacy and verification limitations are a lot more obvious than they are for internet voting, which is at least as bad but tends to be – mistakenly – trusted more.”

Associate Professor Teague said physical ballot submissions were more secure as the ballots themselves and their transport were visible to scrutineers.

“This is a critically important security feature,” she said.

“Postal voting of course requires some trust in the security of the postal service, which isn’t ideal.”

Associate Professor Teague said there could be a place for electronic voting with computers in polling places, but that internet voting wasn’t the way to go.

“For example, [a computer] could print out a paper record that people could check and then deposit in a ballot box to be counted in view of scrutineers,” she said.

“By contrast, sufficiently secure internet voting is an unsolved problem.

“The problem with internet voting is that it’s very hard to verify that the votes have been accurately recorded and properly included in the tally.”

The reliability of internet voting has also been called into question in recent years, following outages during the NSW local council elections and its iVote system.

Associate Professor Teague also stressed a very important factor to consider was the recent Assurance of Senate Counting Bill (2021), which for the first time specifies there must be a rigorous statistical audit of the Senate ballot papers to check they are accurately digitized.

“This is a huge step forward for both real and perceived election security in Australia,” she said.

“The Bill means that scrutineers will be able to watch a careful audit in which randomly selected ballot papers are compared with their digital preferences to estimate the error rate and ensure an accurate count.”

It is unclear at this stage how telephone votes would fit into this picture.

READ ALSO Sweeping changes to education laws proposed after Brindabella unfair exclusion, Bradyn Dillon’s death

Outside of telephone voting, a range of COVID-safe measures will also be in effect at each polling place, including hygiene officers, social distancing, individual pencils, regular cleaning and masks for staff.

Checking in, venue capacity limits and masks for voters will also be implemented if ordered by a state or territory’s health department.

Electoral commissioner Tom Rogers said the AEC had already had plenty of practice running voting centres during a pandemic.

“We’ve been planning the many and various scenarios of running a federal election with COVID-19 safety measures in place since the pandemic began,” he said.

“We’ve run two by-elections in that time as well.”

For now, Mr Rogers said the main priority for all Australians was to check their enrolment, which needs to be up to date by Monday 18 April.

“If you’re not enrolled, you can’t have your say,” he said.

Join the conversation

17
All Comments
  • All Comments
  • Website Comments
LatestOldest

Most Australians do NOT want a ‘Big’ Australia (ANU poll from 2019 stated over 70% of Australians do not want any more immigration). Australia does not have the housing, infrastructure, water, resources etc for millions of people to keep coming here to live. We are already at crisis point and Australia’s culture, social cohesion, and national identity are also disappearing. Poverty and homelessness for Australian citizens is out of control and the worst it has ever been. I will be voting for any political party that stop foreigners from buying up Australian land and housing (it should only be for Australian citizens) and substantially reduces immigration.

I always find it funny that those advocating a bigger Australia are risk adverse for infrastructure – dams, roads, shopping centres

Agree, and I always find it funny that the so-called ‘greens’ (who are supposed to support fresh water, sustainable and suitable housing for people, nice environment, clean air etc.) always want to bring in millions of people from overseas to overcrowd us when it is clearly not good for our country to do that.

Well said, I could not agree more.
Mass migration just continues to dilute the services we currently have.
Politicians love it as it make the ‘economy’ look good by stuffing more people in here.

I am voting because of sausage sandwiches….sorry that is Bunnings.

Stephen Saunders6:35 am 17 Apr 22

Yeah, I agree. The best excuse not to vote in this election is that LibLab and Greens all want an immediate return to mass immigration, and Canberra getting twice as big.

The lack of a meaningful choice is a reason though. There’s no one to vote for, just against. I’d rather mark “none of the above”.

I worked as an electoral official in 1984. Got paid $100 for that, but anyway – when the AEC people were checking the votes, I’ve never seen so many pictures drawn of a certain feature of a male anatomy

I’m postal voting. Sick of getting accosted by useful idiots in koala suits or Labor/Liberal apparatchik androids handing out how to vote cards

Daily Digest

Want the best Canberra news delivered daily? Every day we package the most popular Riotact stories and send them straight to your inbox. Sign-up now for trusted local news that will never be behind a paywall.

By submitting your email address you are agreeing to Region Group's terms and conditions and privacy policy.