Legal bid on 'dodgy' poll

THE Liberal Party will consider challenges to election results in marginal seats as more voting discrepancies emerge.

THE Liberal Party will consider challenges to election results in marginal seats as more voting discrepancies emerge.

Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond labelled the election the "dodgiest" she has been involved in, following Labor's ruse to have supporters impersonate Family First officials in marginal seats and give out how-to-vote cards directing preferences to Labor instead of the Liberals.

As well as the dodgy how-to-vote cards, it has emerged:

IN the Flinders Medical Centre, 96 patients missed out on voting after Electoral Commission staff were unable to take their votes on polling day.

AN undisclosed number of people in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital also were unable to vote, and officials say it is almost certain patients in other major hospitals such as the Royal Adelaide Hospital also missed out.

CROWN Law officers are investigating an anonymous claim that a family voted 159 times - including a minor who voted 31 times - in marginal electorates in order to expose flaws in the electoral system.

The Electoral Commission used a roving team to take votes from bed-bound patients at the FMC before the election but was not able to patrol the wards on polling day.

It is not known how many of the patients were enrolled in the nearby cliffhanger seat of Bright.

Senator Nick Xenophon was contacted by a person concerned that FMC patients who indicated they wanted to vote had missed out on their democratic right.

"This could well have affected the outcome in marginal seats," Senator Xenophon said. "I will be raising this at a federal level to make sure there is not a repeat at the federal election. It is a failure of monumental proportions."

Senator Xenophon said it appeared the Electoral Commission was being starved of resources, but Electoral Commissioner Kay Mousley denied this.

"There is an onus on electors who know they are going into hospital to have a postal vote but people do go in unplanned and we know full well we just can't catch everyone," Ms Mousley said.

"Some of these hospitals are huge, there are people being admitted all the time, there are people having treatment - even after we go through there may be more people who have been admitted or who have moved . . . We were at the QEH from 10am to 5pm but we still know we missed some there."

Ms Mousley said the claim of multiple voting had been referred to the Crown Law Office but there was little information about who the people were or what seats might have been affected.

Ms Redmond is taking legal advice on whether the alleged fraud was grounds for a challenge to the result in close seats.

"It could definitely have affected the outcomes in close seats - we are still getting legal advice on some of the dodgy things that have occurred so I'm not ruling out (a challenge)," she said.

Ms Redmond suggested a system where voters get a black-light stamp on the back of the hand once they have voted, to prevent them voting in another booth, either under their own name or someone else's name.

She also attacked the Labor Party for a letter sent out in the final days of the campaign, purporting to be from a young mother named Danielle Maguire, which urged recipients to vote Labor.

"In the middle was a blatant lie about our intention to scrap the visiting program for new mums - that was never our intention, it was clearly deceitful," Ms Redmond said. "It was just a blatant lie - we had no such policy."

Meanwhile, Greens federal leader Senator Bob Brown said he wanted how-to-vote cards banned, saying that would stop "increasingly desperate attempts" by political parties to win votes.

Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig has two electoral reform Bills before Parliament already and will look at the proposals.

Tasmania and the ACT have banned how-to-vote cards in state and territory elections.