Powerful Words Here From QLD Independent Senate Candidate Steve Dickson Who Is Adamant the Election

I was scruitneering in cold and windy Melbourne in a "safe" Labor seat. What I saw was disappointing, but mostly from the Government's and AECs side. The Public, or the voters, can not be expected to know any better, especially if they are ill informed, lazy, unmotiviated or listen to mainstream media who will not give independent or minor parties a platform.

The Government and the AEC are MEANT to know how to run an election properly! And let me tell you, there is a lot of room for improvement. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge how much work the AEC poll staff put in. Long, long , long hours , understaffing and heaps of stress. Also Covid stupidity played a part in how this was done, a well. However, that doesn't make up for the negatives.

1. AEC poll staff did not have as good as an understanding as I did on what constituted a formal (allowable) and informal (donkey) vote. And, this was with only 1 day's ability to read the Scrutineers Handbook - all 69 pages of it. Some informal votes are obvious (like blank boxes and graffiti ect), but some are not, and these were the ones that were in question. The AEC staff needed to know what is a formal and informal vote for both the House of Reps and the Senate, and they need to not to be biased about where the vote goes to. As an aside, I was really impressed by the voter who took the time to draw little hands in every box with the middle finger extended. That must have taken a lot of time. Unfortunately your vote was informal, even though I give it full points for artisty and humour.

2. Counting of Preferences. This was another real shock to me. Instead of from the bottom up, it occurs from the top down. This is called the "Prefered Party Preference System". They take the two candidates with the most votes. In my case it was Liberal and Labor and then they allocate all the preferences from ALL the other candidates to one or the other of these two, based on where they are comparitively on each ballot paper. So, instead of my vote going to my second preference, it went to either Liberal or Labor based on where they were on my ballot. This is wrong in my opinion.

In my mind, these two things need to be looked at. Also, it would be very handy to have more scruitineers. This process should also be open to the public and made a lot easier to apply for. A scruitineer is required to have paperwork signed by a candidate. As far as I know, only one candidate in my (Senate Independent) electorate managed to arrange pre-signed forms for anyone who wanted to be a scrutineer. This seemed to me to be a very good idea, and I took advantage because I wanted to see how the process was done.

There are two things the AEC can do. 1 is to give proper training on what constitutes a formal and informal vote. For example, I saw a Senate Vote for 1 Nation go into the informal pile because it only had 5 numbers above the line. This is a formal vote. If it had been below the line it would have been informal. These things all AEC employees need to know, especially the Supervisors.

Secondly, if a AEC person is a Supervisor, make it worth their while and make sure they have the training.

As far as the Government goes, this "Two Party Preferred" for preferences has knobs on it and I think needs to be scruitinised itself!