The Liberal party has been accused of “dirty tactics” by offering nonexistent postal vote registration for the referendum, directing would-be voters to a party website to harvest their personal information.
A “vote no” pamphlet delivered to mail boxes includes a QR code that leads to the same website the party used in last year’s election as part of a move the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) labelled “potentially misleading”.
At the election, the Liberals used postal.vote and Labor set up howtovote.org.au to get voters to register for postal votes through them instead of through the AEC. Howtovote.org.au no longer exists while the postal.vote website, run by the Liberal and National parties, prompts people to enter their name and contact details.
Once that information is submitted, the site indicates the information will go to the Liberal and National parties and that users “will now be redirected to the AEC website”.
But once a user clicks “submit”, they stay on the website and are shown a message saying postal vote applications have not yet opened.
“That’s because, despite Mr Albanese announcing the date and launching the yes campaign, the government has not yet issued the writs – the step required to commence the referendum,” it says.
The hardcopy pamphlet features South Australian Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle and Northern Territory Country Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, both prominent no campaigners, urging voters: “If you don’t know, vote no.”
It lists “10 reasons to vote no” which closely echo those in the official no pamphlet, which Guardian Australia has factchecked and annotated.
The Greens’ First Nations spokesperson, Senator Dorinda Cox, dismissed the claims made in the pamphlet as “disinformation and misinformation”. She said: “If you don’t know, go and find out.”
“Don’t use this as a political football,” Cox said. “It is not. This is the lives, the legacy of our nation, 230 years of what we’ve been asking for … and it is being used in a very, very misleading way.”
An AEC spokesperson directed Guardian Australia to the media release it put out at the 2022 election when both Labor and the Coalition were nudging voters to do postal votes via their parties.
The commissioner, Tom Rogers, said at the time such postal vote applications were “legal but … potentially misleading”.
“There is a multitude of issues we’re seeing and it’s the number one complaint we’re receiving from Australians with thousands of pieces of correspondence received across social media and more traditional complaint channels in just days,” he said.
“People have a right to know what they’re doing with their personal data. The AEC takes privacy seriously and operates under the Privacy Act – political parties don’t have to.
“Our message couldn’t be clearer – vote in person if you can, apply for a postal vote through us if you need one.”
An AEC spokesperson told Guardian Australia on Tuesday that third parties who collect postal vote applications do not handle ballot papers, but are required to forward the applications to the AEC for processing.
“The AEC’s longstanding position is that we prefer people to apply for a postal vote directly through us if they need a postal vote. That is, only if they cannot make it to an in-person voting centre,” the spokesperson said.
“If you apply directly through the AEC you will get your ballot paper quicker. The AEC is also bound to operate under the Privacy Act and postal vote applications involve personal information.”
Cox said having a QR code directing people to the party website was “misleading” and “dirty tactics”.
“[The Greens] have a clear policy … this is not illegal but we are trying to get it through the joint select committee on electoral matters to make sure it is [illegal] in the future,” she said. “We can’t continue to ignore this.”
The writs will be issued by Monday 11 September at the latest, which is when postal vote applications will open, and they will close on Wednesday 11 October.
Guardian Australia has contacted the Liberal party for comment.
