Election 2022: Australian Electoral Commission seeing worrying signs of misinformation, elections chief says

Electoral Commissioner says the AEC is seeing ‘worrying trends’ of misinformation just a week into the election campaign.

AEC boss Tom Rogers.

Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers says the AEC is already seeing worrying trends of misinformation just a week into the election.

Mr Rogers told The Weekend Australian conspiracies such as the “vote to sack the government”, which was rampant in 2019, and false claims Dominion Voting Machines would be used to rig the election were of particular concern.

“We’re dealing already with misinformation and disinformation,” he said.

“We’re seeing trends, and some fairly illogical stuff already out there for example about dominion voting machines.”

Social media posts claiming the AEC planned to use the Dominion Electronic Voting machines emerged for the first time after the 2020 US presidential election, when Donald Trump said the election had been “stolen” or rigged.

Since then some people and even candidates of minor parties like the Great Australia Party have raised concern with dominion voting machines being used in Australia.

Former One Nation Senator and member of the Great Australia Party Rod Culleton posted last year that the AEC “proposes to acquire dominion voting systems machines”.

“The AEC is proposing the use of the same Dominion Voting Systems machines to count votes that are being used in America,” he posted on Twitter.

The AEC replied publicly to the claims and said there was no intention to use the machines, but Mr Rogers said the theories had risen since the election was called.

He said the other worrying piece of misinformation was that there was a way to “sack the government”, a theory which rose to prominence last year with videos explaining a “trick” to kick all MPs and Senators out.

“You draw a line through every name on the ballot paper, and you write at the bottom of it ‘no suitable candidate to follow my will’ and you put it in the ballot box,” the videos stated.

“That is a vote to sack all the governments, every representative and ever senator, it is a valid vote.”

Theory ‘absolutely bonkers’

Mr Rogers said while the theory was “absolutely bonkers” he expected it to run again this year.

“We took action at last election because it could come close to confusing voters,” he said.

“The sad thing is, as fast as it was removed, it’s like that old game of whack-a-mole and there’s a group of people who think, if something is removed, it has got a grain of truth to it.”

Mr Rogers confirmed the AEC had already contacted individuals with take down notices and threats of legal action.

He said that given “global events”, such as the questioning of the US election result, the AEC had developed its own “reputation management strategy” to assure people about the integrity of the election.

This included engagement on social media platforms, with the AEC Twitter account replying to dozens of tweets a day to correct false information or answer questions about signage, postal voting and more.

However the Commissioner said he was buoyed by the number of people who had enrolled to vote – 1.1 million more than last time – and said the number of people set to go to the polls was a “miracle” of democracy.

More than 25,000 people enrolled to vote in the hours following the election being called, with about 60,000 doing so the next day.

“We think we’ll certainly be at 97 per cent completeness (of people enrolled),” Mr Rogers said.

“Which is really a modern democratic miracle. ”