The Australian Electoral Commission deserves a big, fat X on its handling of the Voice to Parliament vote.
An X? A big fat one? Unfair criticism of the venerated bureaucracy that oversees Australia's voting system?
Now hold on. An X, even a big, fat one, is not a criticism of the AEC at all.
Why would anyone jump to that conclusion?
In the logic presented by the AEC an X or a cross is open to interpretation as to whether it denotes approval or disapproval.
The logic is people use a cross on a regular basis to indicate approval in check boxes on forms.
Fair enough.
However, the AEC says a tick can only be interpreted in one way: in the positive, and will be counted as a formal vote in the Voice to Parliament referendum.
Err, insert government approved, ambiguous, non-committal surprised, amused, smiley and/or sad faces here.
The difficulty for the AEC is that the Voice referendum, like previous referendums, officially requires a simple Yes or No from voters to indicate their preference.
Again, fair enough. Simple and to the point. Mark your ballot paper and move on, and most importantly ensure your vote counts on the day.
Where the AEC fails the pub test - and creates perceptions of bias - it that there are other ways to mark a ballot paper and have it recognised as being valid.
In addition to the requirements stated on the ballot paper, so-called 'saving provisions' oblige the AEC to count a vote where the instructions have not been followed but the voter's intention is clear.
These laws include a tick (and presumedly a Y) for Yes (and presumedly an N for No), regardless of the AEC's stated instructions.
In the AEC's defence, the formal voting instructions for the referendum are to clearly write either Yes or No, in full, in English.
The AEC is not promoting anything other than a Yes or No vote with the overwhelming majority of voters certain to follow that unambiguous instruction.
The AEC says more than 99 per cent of votes cast at the 1999 federal referendum were formal.
Even of the 0.86pc of informal votes, many would have had no relevance to the use of ticks or crosses, the AEC says, although it is unclear how the differences in informal votes were monitored.
Australian voters need to have absolute faith in a robust, transparent electoral system, including the organisation responsible for managing the electoral system.
That's why the AEC deserves a big, fat X.
- Mark Phelps is a journalist with Farmonline.
