Hacking fear if electronic vote replaces pencil, paper
Daniel Hurst Federal political reporter Date September 21, 2013
Defending the current system: Ed Killesteyn. Photo: Chris Lane
The replacement of paper-and-pencil voting with an electronic system could see Australians lose confidence in the integrity of election results, the nation's electoral chief has warned.
Australian Electoral Commissioner Ed Killesteyn defended the current system's reliability following withering attacks from election hopeful Clive Palmer, who portrayed himself as a victim of ''rigged'' results and the Australian Electoral Commission as a military-infiltrated ''national disgrace''.
Despite the claims, Mr Palmer extended his lead over his Liberal National Party rival to 111 votes on Friday, with the final counting of outstanding votes in the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax expected on Saturday.
The Palmer United Party founder and wealthy Queensland businessman reacted angrily to the discovery of 750 votes tallied against the wrong pre-poll location mid-way through the count.
In an earlier mistake, officials noticed 1000 votes for Victorian independent Cathy McGowan had not been recorded correctly, pushing the seat of Indi further out of reach of former Coalition frontbencher Sophie Mirabella, who subsequently conceded defeat this week.
Mr Killesteyn said computer-based voting would eliminate these kinds of ''human errors'' but the benefits would have to be weighed against hacking and manipulation fears.
He said 75,000 Australians helped to conduct federal elections and political party scrutineers watched the counting - a level of involvement designed to inspire community confidence.
''The notion that you could actually materially manipulate the result is, I think, quite implausible,'' he said on Friday.
''On the other hand, if you go to computer-based systems where everything is centralised, the risks start to increase that there could be significant manipulation of the results.''
Mr Killesteyn said numbering errors were picked up through normal checks comparing lower house and upper house ballot paper totals for each location.
''A lot has been made of the votes in Indi that were supposedly 'found' … and the same with Fairfax. Those votes were never lost. In the Indi case, it was a transcription error. That's all.
''The votes were properly secured. They were in a parcel. But when it was recorded in our election management systems a ''2'' became a ''1''. So that was fairly simple and that was picked up through our quality control processes.''
Mr Killesteyn said the correction of the pre-poll centre location for about 750 votes in Fairfax made no difference to the total number of votes already recorded for each candidate.
Playing down fears of manipulation by people voting more than once, Mr Killesteyn said senior citizens and those of non-English-speaking backgrounds were the groups most likely to mistakenly cast a ballot twice.
''We send people to all aged care facilities and so forth [to provide mobile voting centres]; they vote in that circumstance and then along comes the son or the daughter and says, 'Come on Mum, we've got to go voting', and they vote again on election day,'' he said. They were not systematic attempts to defraud the system.
Mr Killesteyn said the AEC had found 1500 instances of multiple voting at the 2010 election, or about 10 cases per electorate.
A discussion paper issued by the Electoral Council of Australia and New Zealand this week reignited the technology debate, suggesting it may be ''inevitable that paper balloting will, sooner or later, have to be replaced by some form of electronic voting''.
Former federal police commissioner Mick Keelty has criticised "lax" and "complacent" practices with the Australian Electoral Commission in concluding the fate of 1370 missing Western Australian Senate votes may never be known.
The Australian Electoral Commission asked Mr Keelty to investigate what happened to the ballot papers after the loss of the votes was discovered in October during a recount. 'Any party that does not join the behind-closed-doors trade in preferences is a mug.'
Senate ballots were treated with less care than House of Representative ballots by the West Australian AEC. Photo: J.J. Voss
In a report released on Friday, Mr Keelty said while his investigation had not excluded the possibility of criminality, he had not discovered any evidence to suggest it was more likely than that the ballot papers had simply been misplaced.
Challenge to WA Senate result on hold until January
Pia Akerman and Christian Kerr The Australian December 12, 2013 3:47PM
AUSTRALIA'S new Senate could sit before legal challenges to the election result in Western Australia are determined, a High Court justice says.
The High Court, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, is hearing three separate petitions about the result of the fifth and sixth Senate places in Western Australia.
But Senate contenders will be left to sweat through summer after Justice Kenneth Hayne today flagged the challenge to the upper house result in WA would not be heard until late January.
And the matter may not be settled before the new Senate commences sitting in July.
"I cannot dismiss the possibility that ... after the first of July the Senate may not be properly constituted,'' he said.
"That possibility is best avoided.''
The result in WA has already been the subject of a recount and an investigation by former Australian Federal Police chief Mick Keelty, after 1370 votes went missing.
The original WA Senate result saw Labor's Louise Pratt and Zhenya Wang from the Palmer United Party win the final two spots in the state.
A recount demanded by the Greens then had their sitting senator Scott Ludlam and the Australian Sports Party's Wayne Dropulich elected in their stead.
The 1370 votes found during the process to have gone missing have not been recovered.
An embarrassed Australian Electoral Commission has asked the court to overturn the election result and order a fresh election, a step likely to cost $13 million.
Justice Hayne said he would not order fresh counts of the ballots, as sought by the PUP's Mr Wang and Labor state secretary Simon Meade, as it would divert time and energy from pursuing the legal issues.
He asked the parties to return to court tomorrow with an agreed statement of the legal questions which would be tried.
Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson SC said it was the AEC's "reluctant position'' that the Senate positions could not be safely assigned and the case should remain in the High Court given the importance of the legal questions and the gravity of the potential effects.
He said the AEC has indicated it could voluntarily transfer the 946 ballots central to the dispute into the court's custody if a recount was required, but it should only be done once the legal issues had been determined.
After his investigation, Mr Keelty concluded there was a "culture of complacency'' in the WA office of the AEC.
Officials also failed to assure themselves of the "political neutrality'' of people responsible for the transport and storage of ballots, parcels, boxes and pallets, he said.
He said a fresh election would cost taxpayers $13 million.
Schapelle Corby conspiracy theorist to stand for WikiLeaks Party in WA Senate byelection
Date March 12, 2014
Heath Aston Political reporter
EXCLUSIVE
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is ineligible to stand in the WA Senate byelection. Photo: AFP
The WikiLeaks Party has chosen a Schapelle Corby conspiracy theorist as its candidate to replace Julian Assange at the West Australia Senate election.
Gerry Georgatos was endorsed by the WikiLeaks national council on Tuesday night after the party was notified by the Australian Electoral Commission that Mr Assange was not eligible to contest in WA as he had not spent enough time in the state in past six years.
Mr Assange remains in diplomatic asylum inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Mr Georgatos, a university researcher and journalist, wrote a series of articles in January for independent news website, The Stringer, claiming Australian officials ''know without doubt'' that Schapelle Corby is innocent.
The article went on to claim that she was used as a drug mule by corrupt officials and the Australian government considered brokering a ''tit-for-tat'' deal in which Indonesian children in Australian prisons would be ''swapped'' for Ms Corby.
When contacted by Fairfax Media on Wednesday, Mr Georgatos stood by his claims but conceded the story was ''too dramatic'' for the Australian public to take seriously.
Mr Georgatos said he came into contact with Department of Foreign Affairs officials in the course of campaigning for the release of Indonesian boys held in adult prisons. He said they openly claimed Ms Corby’s innocence.
''They said, Gerry, it's geopolitical, it’s in the national interest. This is all about Australian airports and not scaring people about the extent of corruption among baggage handlers,'' he said.
''I do believe unequivocally that she’s innocent. My grounds for getting involved and pursuing her innocence is that DFAT officials told me so, government officials told me so and Indonesian officials told me so.''
Mr Georgatos said he knew the identity of the corrupt Queensland baggage handler who inserted 4.1 kilograms of marijuana into Ms Corby’s boogie board cover in 2004.
A planned switch in Sydney never happened, he said, because NSW Crime Commission police, led by jailed former cop Mark Standen, were conducting surveillance on an expected cocaine shipment from South America as part of Operation Mocha.
Mr Georgatos was WikiLeaks' WA candidate at the botched Senate election in September – drawing just less than 10,000 or 0.75 per cent of the vote – but he had announced he would step aside for Mr Assange, who he said would need just 3000 more primary votes to get elected.
The party’s WA campaign had been badly shaken when the Greens criticised WikiLeaks for preferencing the National Party ahead of their candidate Scott Ludlam, who had taken up the fight for transparency that underpins the WikiLeaks agenda.
Mr Georgatos said for the re-election WikiLeaks had decided to preference Mr Ludlam higher than any other major party, with Labor's Louise Pratt behind him.
Meanwhile, the high-profile euthanasia advocate Philip Nitschke has confirmed he will also contest the April 5 ballot.
He plans to push Clive Palmer to use the balance of power to pressure the government to repeal Kevin Andrews’ 1997 legislation that blocked the Northern Territory and ACT from passing laws in favour of assisted suicide.
Clive Palmer could lose asset over $36m carbon tax bill
Date April 1, 2014 - 8:40AM 91 reading now
Defiant: Clive Palmer wants the carbon tax declared unconstitutional. Photo: Eddie Jim
Government agencies are aiming to force Clive Palmer's Queenland Nickel out of business due to a $36 million carbon tax bill, The Australian reported.
The original carbon tax bill was $6.2 million in the 2013 financial year, but interest and penalties applied since have lifted the amount to $35.8 million.
Mr Palmer has launched a High Court case to have the carbon tax declared unconstitutional.
Queensland Nickel is the only company, of the 370 the carbon tax was applied to, that has not paid.
The Clean Energy Regulator is exploring a plan to sue for the cash, which would capture Queensland Nickel and its directors, including Mr Palmer.
Mr Palmer has dismissed concerns about a conflict of interest between his role as federal MP for the Queensland seat of Fairfax and a private business owner who refuses to pay the carbon tax.
Companies that do not pay their carbon tax bill on finish with a debt of 130 per cent of the original, with 20 per cent interest added annually.
Even if the Abbott government is able to repeal the carbon tax, Queenland Nickel's bill will continue to increase unless the repeal is applied retrospectively as Mr Palmer is trying to achieve.
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