No camp said the referendum is ‘rigged’. Then came viral electoral fraud claims

Unfounded claims that the Voice to Parliament referendum will be “rigged” have ramped up after mainstream political figures from the No campaign accused the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) of favouring the Yes campaign. 

Late last week, the AEC’s Tom Rogers stated that a cross on the referendum ballot was “unlikely” to be counted as a No vote, as had been standard practice for 30 years and several referendums before the Voice.

This prompted an outcry from No campaigners in politics and in the media. No campaign leader Nyunggai Warren Mundine said: “you [sic] got to question the integrity of the @AusElectoralCom”. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said this rule showed that the process was “rigged”. The No campaign released a video about the decision called “Everybody knows”, which featured a song with the lyrics “The fight was fixed”.

The AEC was quick to respond, releasing a statement saying that it “completely and utterly rejects the suggestions by some that by transparently following the established, public and known legislative requirements, we are undermining the impartiality and fairness of the referendum”. 

But these claims had already emboldened some at the fringes to spread claims of electoral fraud. These claims have circulated in the past — citing the fact-checking No campaign as “rigging” the referendum — but escalated last week.

On platforms such as Twitter and Telegram, hundreds of thousands of people saw posts from fringe political figures such as former MP and United Australia Party national director Craig Kelly and neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell, who shared clips of media coverage of the AEC’s statements with comments calling the referendum manipulated and fixed.

Similar clips were shared dozens of times in anti-vaccine, far-right and other online conspiracy communities. On Facebook, posts and comments in anti-Voice groups — such as “Senator Jacinta Price — Dont Divide Us Vote No” and “Vote No to the Voice to Parliament, before we are all Damned” — went further, spreading election fraud conspiracies around destroying mail-in ballots or erasing votes written in pencil.

Dr Kurt Sengul, a far-right and populism researcher, said it was “incredibly noteworthy and concerning” that the undermining of the AEC had been led by a mainstream political party.

“To see the claim that the AEC is ‘rigging’ the referendum emerge from the Liberal/National Party was really concerning and I think will serve to mainstream and normalise conspiracies around election integrity moving forward,” Sengul told Crikey.

While baseless electoral fraud claims failed to catch on during the 2022 federal election, Sengul said sowing distrust around the function of an institution like the AEC lays the groundwork for delegitimising future events beyond the referendum, such as a future federal election.

“We may look back at this moment as a turning point for when election lies and conspiracy theories entered into Australian mainstream political discourse,” he said.