Just when we thought it was all over, we’ve seen another big day of news for local council election results. We are going to leave the blog here for today – we can’t promise this will be the final sign-off!
Read our full detailed story about the vote tampering scandal in Whittlesea and Knox here.
Stevan Kozmevski and Peter Lockwood, the two candidates elected in the Whittlesea Lalor ward and Knox Baird ward, will be sworn in and sit on council while the review takes place.
The Victorian Electoral Commission has declared the results of both elections after the count, which allows it to then apply to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to determine the validity of the election.
VCAT will then hear evidence from the relevant parties about what has allegedly occurred. It can take several years before a decision is made.
In the case of Milad El-Halabi, who was found to be unduly elected due to voter fraud in Merri-bek in 2020, it took until 2023 for VCAT to give its ruling.
By then, he had resigned from office after almost 18 months in the job. A subsequent criminal investigation only made it to sentencing earlier this year.
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Completed postal ballots received by the VEC include the actual ballot itself – the slip of paper that has candidate names filled out with numbers by the voter – which is inside an envelope with a voter declaration stating the voter’s name and signature.
When VEC staff start the count, the first step is separating that voter declaration flap from the ballot and checking off that name from the electoral roll for that area.
It’s at this point that the VEC says it found multiple declaration slips from the same voters.
“So what triggered this initially was the large number of multiple returns,” said Victorian Electoral Commissioner Sven Bluemell.
Upon discovering the duplicate names, the VEC was then able to detect that there had been “unusual numbers of requests for replacements” from those wards. There is no limit to the number of replacement ballots that can be requested.
Bluemell said the choice to continue with postal elections – rather than return to in-person voting – for council elections was a call for the minister for local government, rather than the VEC.
“We have to administer the election as we are required by law. And in this case, the decision from the minister is that we undertake a postal election,” he said.
“We’re confident in the postal election process, absolutely. And what this, to me, shows is that our proactive monitoring identified this.”
If you’re wondering if something like this has happened before, the answer is yes. A candidate at the 2020 Merri-bek Council election was caught trying to rig the vote by mailing in multiple ballots.
Milad El-Halabi pleaded guilty to one count of tampering under the Local Government Act, after County Court judge Stewart Bayles indicated he would be spared prison if he did so.
Voter packs were sent to residents in October 2020, before an unusual number of people complained they had not received a ballot in the mail and were then found to have voted twice.
DNA or fingerprints on 23 ballots matched El-Halabi, his wife and daughter, the court heard. Each of those residents had returned two ballots, one genuine and one false, the court heard.
An election officer spotted the scam, telling police it was uncommon to receive that many calls from people saying they had not received their ballot papers, especially in a small suburb in Melbourne’s north-west. And when she checked the database, the ballots had been reported as lodged.
Helen Davidson, an independent Merri-bek councillor who pushed the VEC through VCAT to have Milad El-Halabi’s election voided for vote tampering last term, questioned whether there was a big enough deterrent for meddling with postal votes.
“It undermines the democratic process at the most fundamental level of government, local council,” Davidson told The Age on Wednesday.
Here are the results from the two elections that are under question:
Lalor ward, Whittlesea City Council
First preferences
Stevan Kozmevski – 4953 (40.27 per cent)
Ellen McNaught – 4002 (32.53 per cent)
Nicholas Hajichristou – 3346 (27.2 per cent)
After preferences
Stevan Kozmevski – 6170 (50.16 per cent)
Ellen McNaught – 6131 (49.84 per cent)
Final margin: 39 votes
Baird ward, Knox City Council
First preferences
Yvonne Alldred – 2946 (29.26 per cent)
Samantha Gilchrist – 784 (7.79 per cent)
Peter Lockwood – 3612 (35.88 per cent)
Gary Saultry – 1524 (15.14 per cent)
Andrew Church – 1201 (11.93 per cent)
After preferences
Yvonne Alldred – 4845 (48.13 per cent)
Peter Lockwood – 5222 (51.87 per cent)
Final margin: 377 votes
Alleged voting irregularities in the Knox and Whittlesea council elections will be passed onto Victoria Police after the Victorian Electoral Commission detected a high number of multiple returned votes.
Electoral Commissioner Sven Bluemmel says that 128 ballots in Lalor ward in Whittlesea and 61 in Baird ward in Knox were detected as suspicious returns, where a voter may have lodged multiple ballots.
Both elections were declared by the VEC, meaning the winning candidates are officially now councillors. However, Bluemmel said he would make an application to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal for review.
“There are serious offences in the Local Government Act for interfering with an election,” he said.
Electoral Commissioner Sven Bluemmel speaking about the voting irregularities.Credit: Luis Ascui
Electoral Commissioner Sven Bluemmel is speaking at the Victorian Electoral Commission and revealing more details of the voting integrity matter during the recent council elections.
Watch his press conference live below.
Council election candidates for two wards in Melbourne’s east and north have been called into a briefing by the Victorian Electoral Commission over an “emerging integrity matter”.
The email to candidates in Whittlesea regarding an integrity briefing.
The Age has contacted candidates in the Lalor ward in Whittlesea City Council and Baird ward in Knox City Council, who confirmed that a VEC briefing was set to take place at 12pm on Wednesday.
The Lalor ward, which covers the suburb of Lalor in Melbourne’s north, was won by former Whittlesea councillor Stevan Kozmevski by 39 votes over independent Ellen McNaught. There was one other candidate, Nicholas Hajichristou, who ran.
In Baird ward, which takes in Boronia in the eastern suburbs, former Labor councillor Peter Lockwood beat incumbent Yvonne Alldred by 377 votes. The other three candidates were Samantha Gilchrist, Gary Saultry and Andrew Church.
At this stage, the specifics of the integrity matter are unclear. The meetings will be conducted remotely.
We will bring you more information when we hear it.
Hello, we’re back again for any wash-up out of the local government elections.
Counting is finished, however we will keep an eye on any news that arises out of the results. Thanks, as always, for reading and leaving comments.