Australian Electoral Commission backflips on Covid virus veto

A last minute rule change will expand access to phone voting to anyone who tested positive to Covid after 6pm last Friday.

A last minute rule change will expand access to phone voting to anyone who tested positive to Covid after 6pm last Friday.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison confirmed the government had received a recommendation from the Electoral Commission to expand access to the phone voting scheme, amid the threat of legal challenges.

“They’ll be expanding (phone voting) to people who tested positive after 6pm on Friday,” Mr Morrison told Perth radio station 6PR.

“We’ve made it very clear that we would be accepting any recommendations that came forward. This morning, finally, those recommendations have come forward,” Mr Morrison said.

An AEC spokesperson told 2GB radio that the AEC commissioner Tony Rogers has approved a brief recommending government changes to the regulation to allow Covid-positive people from last Friday onwards to use the telephone service to vote.

It came after Kooyong Independent candidate Monique Ryan signalled she would take Federal Court action over rules banning some Covid-infected Australians from voting.

Tens of thousands of people who tested positive to Covid before Tuesday face being denied the right to vote in what has been labelled an assault on democracy.

The Australian Electoral Commission has come under fierce criticism after confirming that anyone who tested positive to Covid before Tuesday night will not be able to vote unless they applied for a postal ballot before the Wednesday cut-off.

While the AEC has the technology to run phone voting, the option is only being extended to people who tested positive to the virus after 6pm on Tuesday.

Lawyers for Ms Ryan were on Thursday night preparing for the legal action, which will be brought against Special Minister of State Ben Morton who oversees the related regulations.

“Today, at prepoll, a neighbour came to me in tears. Her husband has Covid and has just realised that he won’t be able to vote on Saturday,” Dr Ryan said in a statement.

“I soon discovered that it wasn’t just him. I started hearing from dozens of people in the same boat. Looking at the case numbers, I realised that up to 200,000 people were affected by this situation; possibly as many as 1 per cent of Australian voters. It’s unacceptable. This could place some electoral results open to challenge.

“This is the result of a decision by the Morrison Government. Special Minister of State Ben Morton has passed flawed regulations that mean a significant number of Australians can’t vote in this election.”

Anyone who tested positive to Covid before Tuesday night will not be able to vote unless they applied for a postal ballot before the Wednesday cut-off.

Dr Ryan has tonight launched a fundraising campaign to raise money for legal costs associated with the challenge.

An AEC spokesman on Thursday night claimed anyone being denied their constitutional right to vote only had themselves to blame, because electors “need to plan their vote in a global pandemic”.

Constitutional experts said the restrictions could potentially be challenged in the high court. Sydney University Professor Anne Twomey said it was “possible” that the rules could be challenged in the high court, either for their “constitutionality”, or in the case of tight electorate contests.

If enough people had been denied the right to vote due to the phone voting cut-off, it could lead to results in electorates where the votes were tight being challenged, she said.

“It’s possible that litigation could be run in relation to these things if the election was tight and the votes missing would have made a difference,” Prof Twomey said.

“There may be practical issues about whether people may have been disenfranchised.”

Professor David Flint went further, saying that “it would be unconstitutional to deny (people) a vote” on the basis of isolation rules.

The AEC says people should have planned for voting during a pandemic. Picture: AAP Image

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s wife Lucy Turnbull was among those attacking the rules on Twitter, likening them to “US style voter suppression”.

The Electoral Commissioner was in February given the power to extend access to phone voting to anyone who tested positive to Covid-9 after 6.01pm on Tuesday. That date is contained in Commonwealth regulations so cannot be changed by the AEC.

An AEC spokesman said state health authorities had proactively told people about the need to register for a postal vote after they tested positive, either through a PCR test or a RAT.

“We still enjoy amazing access to voting, but there comes a point when people need to plan their vote during a global pandemic,” the spokesman said.

People who access the phone voting service are asked to make a declaration about their circumstances, including when they tested positive to Covid.

The AEC spokesman said phone voting was an “emergency option”, and even if it could expand access to the system, the influx of voters could “break the system”.

He said the agency had “about 5000 operators delivering the voting option, which is at the absolute limits of what we could get”.

More than 130,000 people tested positive to Covid between Sunday and Tuesday. The AEC said the total number of positive cases would have included non-citizens and people under 18.

A spokesman said that 143,000 people applied for a postal vote between Saturday and Tuesday night, while 1.4 million people pre-polled.

A NSW Police spokeswoman said officers would continue to respond to reports of any breaches of the public health order.

Originally published as Australian Electoral Commission backflips on Covid virus veto