Legitimacy of two Victorian local government elections in question after duplicate votes detected

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The legitimacy of two Victorian local government elections has been called into question after a large number of duplicate votes were detected from mailed ballot packs. The situation had been referred to police and the Local Government.

Transcript

00:00The election results in question are specifically in Whittlesea Council's

00:05Laidlaw Ward and Knox Council's Baird Ward. The VSC found there were 128

00:11suspicious ballots in the Laidlaw Ward and 61 in Baird Ward, where single voters

00:16appeared to have mailed in multiple ballots. You might think that's not a

00:20huge number, but in Whittlesea's Laidlaw Ward there's just 39 votes in it

00:25between winner Stephen Kuzmiewski and runner-up Ellen McNorse. The margin in

00:30Knox's Baird Ward is a lot bigger. 377 votes separate Peter Lockwood from Yvonne

00:36Allred. I cannot say precisely how many fraudulent completed votes would have

00:40progressed to counting, however it is clear that the results of the elections

00:44could have been impacted. So how did this happen? Well the VSC says in these

00:49elections an unusually high number of people asked for replacement ballots. The

00:54ABC understands the majority of these were from people who believed they

00:57hadn't received one in the first mail-out. It's possible their original

01:02ballots had been stolen. That's what happens during the 2020 elections for

01:06Moreland Council, now known as Marybeck, which ultimately saw former councillor

01:11Milad El-Hilabi plead guilty to vote tampering. That situation took years to

01:16shake out. Now it's up to VCAT to decide on whether these latest results are

01:21invalid or not, and in the meantime the successful candidates will be sworn in

01:25as councillors.

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