Vote Early - And Often !

Donald Trump is preparing the ground in case he is defeated in the coming American Presidential election.  He has long claimed that elections in America are rigged by Wall street but now he is directly accusing his opponent - Hillary Clinton - of using her husbands past presidential influence to tilt the vote in her favour.

Here in Australia our voting process has always been regarded as beyond question.   The nations entire electoral vote is managed and supervised by the Australian Electoral Commission ( AEC ) and this covers everything from ensuring that eligible voters are recorded on the roll, to providing and manning voting sites and vote counting centres.   The vote counting is a meticulous process with scrutineers from all the interested parties keeping a close watch to ensure there are no irregularities.

It is something of concern that we learn that at the last Federal election more than eighteen thousand people appear to have voted twice - and in some instances - many times.   Such is the process of the AEC that the electoral rolls from all the voting stations are subjected to comparisons where any duplication will be apparent.

To speed an orderly flow of voters on election day the AEC provides sufficient voting stations in each electorate and as each voter presents they are asked their name and address and this is then marked off on the electoral roll.  This voting duplication comes to light when all the rolls for a given electorate are compared - well after the poll.

The statistics reveal that in New South Wales 6760 people appear to have voted on more than one occasion, In Victoria 4780,  Queensland 2792 - and in the Northern Territory a minuscule 178.
Some people appear to have moved from one polling station to another - to record a vote on five occasions.

This is a criminal offence and it carries penalties of a $ 10,000 fine or twelve months imprisonment.A similar penalty applies to those impersonating another person to record a bogus vote.   Those eighteen thousand who have recorded more than one vote will be required to explain this anomaly and it may involve a police investigation.

Eighteen thousand is a mere small fraction of the overall vote, but it could be crucial in elections that were decided on a mere handful of votes.   No doubt the AEC will be seeking a solution and the most obvious one would be to ask voters to provide personal identification before their name is recorded as having voted on the voting roll.

Passports or photo driving licenses would be ideal, but such a plan risks depriving those without such documents of their lawful vote.   In some other countries, personal identification has been used as a ruse to deliberately exclude unwanted citizens from having a vote.

We are reluctant to move to online voting because of the fear that hackers could disrupt the result, but perhaps the computer could work alongside paper voting rolls to detect duplications.   When a voting slip is issued and the name is recorded on the paper roll, entry to the computer would not permit a vote for that same person at any other voting booth.

It is up to the AEC to solve this problem.   In some countries voting corruption was so pervasive that a frequent comment on voting day was   "  Vote early - and often ! "