The Liberal MP Bridget Archer has warned it is “irresponsible to cast doubt on the integrity” of the Australian Electoral Commission, after senior members of the Coalition and some no campaign groups raised concerns over whether crosses count as valid votes in the voice referendum.
On Sunday, the shadow minister for finance and special minister of state, Jane Hume, called it an “inconsistency” that a tick would count as yes but a cross would not count as a no.
The special minister of state, Don Farrell, said the “campaigners against Indigenous recognition are truly grasping at straws”.
He noted that “at no point” while the Coalition was in government “did they ever raise this issue, nor did they raise it when they voted in favour of the referendum machinery legislation earlier this year”.
The ballot papers given to Australians at a referendum to enshrine an Indigenous voice to parliament in the constitution, expected to be held on 14 October, will clearly tell voters “write yes or no” on two separate occasions.
On Thursday the AEC commissioner, Tom Rogers, explained that due to savings provisions which have been in place since 1988, and used in six referendums, that “it is likely that a tick will be accepted as a formal vote for yes but a cross will not be accepted as a formal vote”.
After comments from the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, suggesting the process was “rigged”, Hume told Sky News on Sunday it was “really a commonsense issue”.
“I think it’s important to point it out – it does seem to be an inconsistency. I know it’s occurred in the past. But ... I think we want to make sure that integrity is central to the voice referendum.”
Hume cited other “integrity measures” such as that both yes and no sides have tax deductible gift status, and households were sent official pamphlets setting out the yes and no case, something which the Coalition fought to keep in negotiations with Labor over the machinery bill.
Counting crosses on ballots “is another integrity measure”, she said, adding it was important to “give people comfort that the result is as clean and neat as possible”.
The AEC has said it “completely and utterly” rejects assertions it is acting unfairly, suggesting claims to the contrary were “based on emotion rather than the reality of the law”.
Archer, a Liberal supporter of the voice, told Guardian Australia “the AEC has been very clear in relation to this matter, they are a robust and trusted institution”.
“It is irresponsible to cast doubt on the integrity of the AEC and their established processes in a deliberate attempt to confuse people or induce them to question the validity of the result,” she said.
“My advice to voters would be simply to write ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the ballot as instructed.”
Farrell said the guidelines on how to complete a ballot paper have been the same “for decades”.
Kate Thwaites, the Labor chair of the committee inquiry that examined the referendum machinery bill, noted the treatment of ticks and crosses under the savings provisions “wasn’t raised by witnesses in public hearings nor by members of the committee, including the Coalition members”.
“That is the correct place to raise issues if you have problems with those processes – not to call into question the integrity of election bodies or other matters,” she said.
Fair Australia, an unofficial no campaign of the rightwing group Advance Australia, has sought to weaponise the issue online, with an Instagram video featuring Rogers’ comments set to a cover of Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows.
The video features the lyrics “everybody knows that the dice are loaded” and “everybody knows the fight was fixed”.
Dean Parkin, the director of Yes23, said this “isn’t the AEC’s first rodeo” given its previous experience running referendums.
“I think we should trust that the AEC knows exactly what he’s doing,” he told Sky News.
“I think it has been a bit of a kerfuffle but ultimately the AEC know what they’re doing … and Australians can have great confidence in our system.”
On Friday the minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, said the AEC was “a trusted entity in this country and the way that they are conducting this referendum is absolute no different”.
“The idea that we are doing something different, or the AEC is doing something different this referendum, is simply wrong.”
