The Australian Electoral Commission has pleaded with Australians to write either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ on their ballot paper. Commissioner Tom Rogers says a tick will also ‘likely’ be accepted as a formal vote, but a cross won’t be.
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00:00 The Australian Electoral Commission is urging all Australians to follow the instructions
00:06 on the ballot paper and write clearly and specifically in English yes or no when they
00:11 vote in the upcoming voice to parliament referendum.
00:15 And both sides of politics would agree that that's irrefutably the correct instructions.
00:20 But this particular debate stemmed from the appearance of the AEC Commissioner Tom Rogers
00:26 on Sky News where he explained that the AEC does have savings provisions which means that
00:31 when a voter's intention is clear that that would be counted as a formal vote.
00:36 So he said that a tick would likely be counted as a yes vote but a cross would not be counted
00:43 as a no vote and that's because a cross can often represent a checkmark meaning that it
00:48 would be ambiguous whether that voter wanted to vote yes or no.
00:53 He also says that depending on how clear the tick is that that also may not count.
00:58 But the opposition leader Peter Dutton said that this counting method was completely outrageous
01:05 and stinks and he says that he's contacting the AEC about this process.
01:11 He says that counting, he says he wants a tick mark to be counted as yes but a cross
01:16 to be counted as a no and that anything else would favour one side in a democratic election
01:22 and would result in a dodgy process.
01:27 Alison how has the Electoral Commission now responded?
01:32 Well the AEC says that this is simply not up to them, that this is what's in the legislation
01:38 and has been since 1988 and been used in federal elections since then and multiple referenda.
01:44 So they say they have no discretion to simply ignore the law.
01:48 They also say that a Y or an N on the ballot paper could also be counted but also may not
01:54 be if the handwriting was unclear.
01:57 But in that original interview with the AEC Commissioner Tom Rogers he said he was nervous
02:02 about even talking about these alternative options because he doesn't want to provide
02:07 mixed messaging or confuse Australians when they go to vote.
02:12 But the AEC also wanted to point out the scale and size of this potential problem.
02:18 They say that the vast, vast majority of Australians are expected to follow the instructions on
02:24 the voting on the ballot paper and vote correctly and that in the 1999 referendum less than
02:30 one percent of votes, 0.86 percent of votes were informal votes and only a few of them
02:37 were related to ticks or crosses.
02:40 The AEC has also confirmed that they have received a letter from the federal opposition
02:45 leader Peter Dutton and will be responding swiftly.
02:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]