Odinian Beta

The usual suspects are in uproar over the Morrison Government’s plans to require ID when voting. Currently, under Australia’s compulsory voting system, all adults are required to vote but only have to give their name and address at the polling booth and confirm they haven’t already voted in the election to receive their ballots.

This has always seemed strange to me as I need to show ID when I travel on an aeroplane, when I enter a registered club and in many other circumstances. To my knowledge, no-one thinks the requirement to show ID in these situations is “racist”.

Yet apparently requiring ID to vote is “racist”, despite everyone, regardless of their skin colour, being treated the same under the proposed law. This is the exact opposite of racism, which is properly defined as treating people differently based on their skin colour.

So allegations that this is “racist” are easily dismissed.

Could voter fraud be material?

The more interesting question to me is whether it is possible to orchestrate mass fraud in the Australian electoral system and potentially change the result of a seat or seats.

I stress that I have no intention of trying this but instead view it as more of an intellectual exercise to see whether it could in theory be achieved!

I don’t think the Australian voting system is as corrupt and easily manipulated as that of the US given the multiple ways in which the US system is potentially open to fraud. These include mass mailing of mail-in and absentee ballots, lax signature verification requirements on returned ballots, so-called “ballot harvesting”, lack of ID requirements in many states, out-of-date electoral rolls, and so on.

Even so, what are the potential ways fraud could occur here?

First, some statistics.

In the last Federal election in 2019, a total of 15,088,616 votes were cast across Australia. With 16,424,248 people enrolled to vote, that represents a turnout rate of 91.87%. (Some 536,000 people who are eligible voters didn’t bother to enrol, for whatever reason).

So we know that there is a fairly large percentage of the population (8.13% or around 1.3 million people) that didn’t bother to turn up to vote even though they were enrolled.

Frankly, I doubt those who wanted to manipulate the voting system would be so open as to give their real name multiple times to various polling stations, unless they were doing so for a lark. These people could easily be identified (albeit after the fact) and exposed to questioning or more serious action from the authorities.

More nuanced

However, is it too far-fetched to suggest that the “real” percentage of those on the electoral roll who nevertheless don’t vote is higher than 8.13%? If a person knows his friends or family aren’t going to vote, then what is to stop him visiting various polling stations in his electorate and voting on their behalf as well as on his own?

To me, if this occurs then I think it would be more prevalent among communities that have English as a second language, that are in isolated regions or within groups of people who for various reasons would prefer to be doing anything other than trekking to the polling station to cast their ballot.

In any case, how do we know the electoral roll is up-to-date? This is an ongoing problem in a number of US states after people die or move interstate, so it would be interesting to know how up-to-date Australia’s electoral roll really is.

Many people who oppose voter ID point to the numbers that suggest multiple voting is basically non-existent or immaterial. However, as I have noted above, this is not the main way I would go about rorting the voting system if I were forced to do so!

Of course, all this is hypothetical on my part but if a system can be defrauded, then basic self-interest means that it will be sooner or later.

Ultimately, the only way we could know for sure whether voter fraud is material in Australia is to require ID when voting.

Perhaps this is why the ALP and the Greens are so virulently against providing a method to determine once and for all the level of fraud, if any, in the Australian voting system.