The news that up to sixteen thousand citizens of this country committed fraud by duplicating their right to one vote in the last federal election hasn't caused much of a reaction. Does the acceptance of dishonesty give a green light to organised crime and other corruption? I think so.

Any lobby group could have organised this voter fraud, and who knows, perhaps they got what they wanted and we have been denied our rightful government.
Perhaps other contributors to this forum have an example of a vote casting system that's fool proof or less open to abuse.

.http://www.news.com.au/national/aec-adm ... 6232980811

Christine,

One commentator on the link that you posted seems to have a good idea, if it'll work.

Can't see that TAB idea working somehow. I think that too many people would object to an election interfering with something they really thought was important, getting their bets on in time.

Making the voting process more difficult would, in my opinion, result in less people participating.

The key indicator would be if all the fraud occurred in electorates that were expected to be close, but then perhaps the fraud by one side would be countered by the fraud from the other side.

Not a real news story from not a real newspaper, the Herald Sun.

Is this one a real story from a real newspaper?
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/na ... 06432.aspx
It might offend some people's sense of privacy but ID cards could be the answer. Each person could then punch their choice of candidate on specially designed handpieces. It would be way easier if we had a first past the post system though.
Why do we have a preferential system anyway?

Christine,

We have a Preferential system because FPP is not democratic.

With FPP you could, and do, have the following:

Joe Jones 15%
Mis Taken 16%
Bill Smith 14%
Joe Blogs 10%
Red Ragger 18% and (for the sake of simple maths) the rest of the votes were informal because people wrote naughty words on them about Red Ragger.

Red Ragger gets elected, but the majority hated his guts and would never have voted for him in a fit.

Under Preferential Joe on 10% was eliminated on the first count and his votes then went to the ones that his supporters preferred to see elected if he was knocked out.

So it goes until at the final count Joe Jones, all round good guy, and the peoples preferred choice got 55% and saw off Red who was a swine anyway.

Proportional Representation is better again.

Well with the Canberra Times story it only took me a minute to find out that the alleged fraud made no difference to the results in the two electorates they named. I just feel that a real reporter would have checked that and included that in the story. Maybe they did and found that it made no difference in any electorate but chose to omit that.

If the fraud occurred in electorates where it had no chance of making any difference to the end result then to me, that says that it was most likely not an organised attempt by a criminal group. The more likely explanation is that the extra votes came from people with poor understanding of the process or mental health issues and maybe the occasional party zealot thrown in. A good reporter may have been able to find that out but sadly I don't think the Murdoch press has many of those.

but it happened and it shouldn't have and we have no way of knowing how often it has happened in the past.

Maybe a stitch it time might be good policy?

Here is a recent article discussing voter id issues in the US where the use pf photo id appears to be gaining in use and support. Would the majority of Australians favour photo id as a means of preventing this kind of voter fraud?

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/9611

Photo ID is a great tool for confirming in the mind of the beholder that the card is legitimate and that is all.

Photo IDs can be forged at the drop of a hat with home printers, and added legitimacy given by using a home laminator.

Indelible ink on the pinkie is third world technology but it works.

Wouldn't be acceptable in Australia as it doesn't have an astronomical cost, doesn't run on electricity and doesn't need a horde of experts to implement.

Samuel,

I see in the States reports of fraud involving forged signatures on petions to get various persons on the primary ballot in the last general election. So it appears that fraud can occur even before the votes are cast. Absentee voting seems to be another area ripe for corruption as it by nature is a paper ballot.

There’s a particularly Australian dimension to this problem which is that, in Australia, voting is compulsory; you get fined if you don’t turn up to cast your vote.

The flip side of this is that voting has to be made accessible for all. No matter what your circumstances, they have to make it possible for you to vote. So, e.g., in Australia a voter can vote at any polling station in his electorate, and usually at selected polling stations in every other electorate. Contrast this with, say, the UK, where you vote at the polling station assigned to you, which is based on where your residence is. The point of the Australian flexibility here is to facilitate voting if you happen to be not at your home on polling day. But it obviously creates opportunities for people to vote fraudulently, by voting in their own name twice or more at different polling stations (or, indeed, by voting in other people’s names at polling stations that those people are unlikely to vote at).

There’s a trade-off, in short, between facilitating legitimate voting and facilitating fraudulent voting; anything which serves one end will probably also serve the other. Any thing which restricts fraudulent voting will likely restrict legitimate voting also. (Electronic ID cards plus online validation when ballots are cast? That’s a barrier to people who have mislaid, or not received, their ID cards, or to people who go to a polling place where the online link is down. Plus, it raises serious questions about the effective secrecy of the ballot.)

You have to decide which is more important; enabling people to vote, or preventing people from voting fraudulently. There isn’t a perfect answer here, but we do need to accept that some trade-off is inevitable.

The trade off is that with the probably only effective way, the pinkie (or other designated finger) remains stained for a day or so.

What objections could people raise to showing a clean finger to polling officials?
Polling officials might have a problem with the way that the finger is presented, but that's a different problem.

It is interesting to note that the use of indelible ink is one of the key reforms advocated by the Joint Action Committee for Electoral Reform in Malaysia, and one which was initially agreed on and then that agreement rescinded on for the most recent elections.

http://bersih.org/?page_id=4109

So, no postal votes, then? No early voting for people who may be away on polling day? The only way to vote is to turn up, in person, on the day?

Provision could be made for those aspects but for the majority the dirty digit is the way to go.

Not necessarily. We need to identify the problem here.

If the records show that “Samuel” voted twice at two different polling places, how likely is it that Samuel actually cast both votes? It strikes me as more likely that Samuel has been impersonated by someone else on one of these occasions. All you need, therefore, to get around the inky finger security method is someone who hasn’t already voted to impersonate Samuel. That could be someone who isn’t entitled to vote, or it could be someone who has previously cast an early or postal vote, or it could even be a party loyalist entitled to vote in another electorate which is “safe” for his party, who foregoes his vote in that electorate in order to vote in Samuel’s electorate, where the party needs every vote it can get.

It’s pretty easy to cast an early vote - I’ve done it myself - and doing so would leave me free to vote a second time in your name on polling day without being caught by the inky finger test. I suspect you will find that countries that employ the inky finger method don’t offer early voting, or do so only on very restrictive terms, so that in fact very few people get to cast an early vote.

Drat.

Then how about an Identity Number, embedded in the wrist, that can be electronically scanned?
It could also be used at the Supermarket and much quicker than those bloody cards that hold up the line.

The answer is either going to be less categories of voters or high tech, and I suspect that the higher the tech the more future fraud.

The problem with personal identifiers is that, while they may increase confidence that only those entitled can vote, they will obviously reduce confidence in the secrecy of the ballot.

I suspect a level of voting fraud is just something we have to live with. We already live with a fairly large donkey vote, the result of forcing people to vote when in fact they have no preference among the candidates, and I suspect that distorts results rather more than voter fraud.

"This is said that those people will rule the world (or countries) who are not capable to their positions."

I think this is the same situation that is described above. If we are making some differences to the system (although by making fake votes) then this is obvious that we, by our selves, have to bear the consequences.