This is not something our electoral system is designed to account for. There is nothing stopping a bunch of Zionists from registering a political party called ‘Free Palestine’ and direct all their preferences to a cause at complete odds with what voters expect they will be supporting.
I bet there’d be some sort of ramifications if someone registered the name ‘new libs’ and redirected all preferences to Labor or Greens.
The sad thing is we all know this will actually work, too. So many voters are woefully uneducated about what they’re voting for, even if it’s a mainstream party.
Mate it’s not even illegal according to the AEC to mimic AEC livery and ‘how to vote’ forms and placards to trick Chinese immigrants into voting for the LNP.
Nor is it illegal to hand out “How to vote for Greens / LNP / Labour” cards at polling stations as a member of an opposition party, and deceptively place all preferences for the opposite intentions.
Nor is it illegal to mimic the AEC and puport to simply be a government representative enabling your application to a postal vote, while actually being from Liberal or Labor party and taking any submitted information as your own, to do whatever you like with.
So there’s zero chance they’ll care about a party misrepresenting their political goals.
Australians have very little freedom of speech enshrined in law, but what little there is aims to protect politicians only.
Two can play that game.
I think the AEC (and related State bodies) has codes it must enforce under its legislation, anything outside those codes it cannot enforce and would be going beyond it’s remit to attempt to. The agency won’t have the latitude that the judiciary have, nor should they.
Although these cases all build on the reality that the AEC’s rules may be inadequate for the multitude of bad faith partisans infecting Australian democracy.
This made me so incensed when I read it. If the Victorian government don’t have a response to this diagusting attempt at voter disenfranchisement then it undermines the creeibility of the whole system. There will be no reason to act in good faith, the clear signal to political players and Partys of all colours will be to attempt to deceive agendas and farm votes from those deceptions as much as this case.
In other words this is a potential precedent that should be decapitated in the strongest possible terms. It is worth the political cost to reject these deceitful and disgusting people’s plan.
Edit: Its cases like this that confirms my belief that the Social Web, spaces like this, need to be supported and grown. People like this are able to grow because governments are scared to demand change from big tech, and big tech have a financial (and sometimes ideological, ‘X’ at least) interest in platforming bad faith provocateurs.
