Australia’s election commissioner has criticized the ‘tinfoil hat with a madman’ for spreading disinformation online in the run-up to the Voice referendum.
Tom Rogers discussed the problematic talking points he’s been hearing online as the referendum fast approaches, with Aussies going to the polls on October 14.
Mr Rogers addressed the inaccuracies being spread by a “small” number of voters without wanting to “take over the internet” during a briefing on Thursday.
Officials have faced abuse when trying to correct misinformation about voting, leading the AEC to change the way it approaches the issue, Mr Rogers said.
Mr Rogers debunked a nasty rumor that the AEC was using US voting machines that would ‘erase’ votes.
Australian Election Commissioner Tom Rogers has said a small number of ‘tinfoil hat wearing crazy’ conspiracy theorists are causing the AEC online headaches
In the run-up to the Voice to Parliament referendum, AEC officials have faced torrents of abuse and social media companies have failed to remove misinformation, Mr Rogers said.
Not only did conspiracy theorists attack the legitimacy of the election, but social media giants also failed to curb their violent rhetoric, Rogers said.
“We’ve seen more abuse, I would use the term vitriol online,” he said.
“This is the first social media referendum in Australia’s history.”
The AEC has worked with social media companies to ensure disinformation is removed from their platforms, but these advocacy efforts have not always been successful.
Social media was used by former President Donald Trump to sow major divisions in the US during the fallout from the 2020 presidential election.
One of Trump’s favorite talking points focused on electronic voting machines and how they allegedly tampered with votes, leading to his defeat.
This fear of electronic machines has been parroted by some Australians, which Mr Roger always emphasized the lack of logic in some arguments.
“We don’t use voting machines,” he said.
In Australia, all elections are conducted using paper ballots on which voters place a pen to label their vote.
Mail-in ballots have also remained a talking point for conspiracy theorists who have waded into them remotely during pandemic elections.
A record number of voters have requested a ballot paper ahead of the Voice referendum, with more than 1.2 million registered applications already submitted.
While Mr Rogers said it was not an identical comparison, only one million ballot applications had been submitted before the May 2022 federal election.
Talk of electronic voting machines tampering with the referendum makes the least sense to Mr Rogers, who simply said ‘we don’t use voting machines’
He also warned that the AEC could take almost two weeks to count votes if the referendum was close.
‘People have asked me: will we get a result tonight? And the answer is: I don’t know. It depends on how close the result is on the day,” he said.
“Given that we are at 1.2 million postal votes, we may well have to wait for postal votes to return before the results become clear, and by law we have a full 13-day period have to wait to resolve the matter. with that.’
Mr Roger said the AEC will “go the extra mile to ensure all Australians can vote” in the record-breaking referendum.
The number of people between 18 and 24 years old has reached a record high: 91.4 percent of eligible voters have already registered.
Indigenous people also have the highest number of voters ever recorded, with 94.1 percent of the population.
Total registrations for the referendum currently stand at 17,676,347 or 97.7 percent of eligible Australians.
To reach the final few percent, Rogers said the AEC will visit remote locations across the country over the next three weeks to register people.
Planes, boats and other forms of transport will be used to access rugged outbacks and offshore areas.
The mobile survey for all remote locations will begin on Monday and it will be the most ‘logistically challenging’ and complex operation of its kind in history.
Telephone voting will also be available for those who are blind or partially sighted, as well as for Australians based in Antarctica.
Voters will be reached in “every way possible,” Deputy Commissioner Jeff Pope said.
“We’re going to those communities to try to get the franchise to as many people as possible,” Mr Pope said.
The October 14 vote will be one of the largest in history, with 17,676,347 or 97.7 percent of eligible Australians registered to vote
“It is one of the largest and most complex undertakings in Western democracies around the world.”
There will be more than 500 early voting centers across the country, and 7,000 polling booths will be used for same-day voting.
Mr. Rogers reiterated that despite all these efforts to reach active voters, the conspiracies floating online remained the last frontier for his team.
“We are adjusting our own social media footprint and the way we interact with individuals,” he said.
“There’s no point in going down a rabbit hole if you know someone is deliberately trying to take you down.”
‘What we try to do is deal with positive information, by providing fact-based information. We will continue to deal with misinformation online as it emerges.
“We’re not stopping anyone from saying anything, Australians have the right to believe what they want to believe… but if they talk about the trial, and it’s wrong, we will deal with it and put it on our disinformation register as well.”