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Fraudulent enrolment
2.1 As outlined in chapter one, for fraudulent enrolment to occur there has to
be criminal intent. Fraudulent enrolment generally takes the form of:
— People deliberately enrolling themselves at a false address/in the wrong electoral district;
— People deliberately enrolling false names at real, or false, addresses;
and
— People deliberately enrolling real (other peoples') names at real, or false, addresses.1
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Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, Canberra |
2.2 False enrolment occurs if an elector is enrolled at the wrong address. This
is generally the result of moving to another electoral division and failing
to change one's enrolment details. False enrolment also occurs when
people who are ineligible to enrol such as non-citizens do so. Non-citizens
seeking to enrol often do so on the mistaken belief that as residents they
are entitled to enrol and vote.2 Thus false enrolment is the product of a misunderstanding on the part of people enrolling as to their obligations, 'rather than deliberate attempts at fraud'.3 Indeed, as the Australian Electoral Officer for Queensland, Mr Bob Longland, pointed out, enrolling
____________________________
1 Legislative Assembly of Queensland Legal, Constitutional and Administrative Review Committee. September 2000. Inquiry into the prevention of electoral fraud: Issues Paper. Brisbane, LCARC, p 13.
2 Transcript p 134 (R.Patching).
3 Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. 1997. The 1996 Federal Election: Report of the Inquiry into the conduct of the 1996 Federal Election and matters related thereto. Canberra, AGPS, p 5.
Defining enrolment fraud
2.4 The AEC informed the committee that the procedures for additions,
amendments and deletions from the electoral roll are contained in the
General enrolment manual, a detailed document that is drawn from
legislation but includes principles and practices directed to properly
enrolling voters and maintaining the roll.6
2.5 The emphasis in the General enrolment manual is on voters being correctly
enrolled. As a result, it does not specifically define fraudulent enrolment,
but it does provide information about what to do if an enrolment form is
defective or is not properly witnessed.7
2.6 When questioned about whether the AEC had a definition of enrolment
fraud at the 3 April 2001 public hearing, the AEC responded:
Not specifically to enrolment ... there is the general fraud control
policy of the AEC.8
2.7 The AEC's Fraud control plan 1997-1999 defines fraud using the definition
contained in the Fraud control policy of the Commonwealth (see chapter 1). 9
____________________________
4 Transcript p 41 (AEC).
5 Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. 1997. The 1996 Federal Election: Report of the
Inquiry into the conduct of the 1996 Federal Election and matters related thereto. Canberra, AGPS,
p. 20.
6 Submissions p S843 (AEC), and Transcript p 548 (AEC).
7 Transcript p 548 (AEC).
8 Transcript p 548 (AEC).
9 Australian Electoral Commission. 1998. Fraud control plan 1997-1999. Canberra, AEC, p 7; see
also Commonwealth Law Enforcement Board. 1994. Best practice for fraud control: Fraud control
policy of the Commonwealth: Incorporating an Interim Ministerial Direction on fraud control.
Canberra, AGPS, p 3.
Extent of enrolment fraud
2.10 A threshold issue for the committee as part of this inquiry is the actual
level of fraudulent enrolment. While the committee never intended
investigating all allegations of electoral fraud, through evidence received
it was able to obtain an overview of the extent of enrolment fraud.
2.11 As part of its initial submission to the inquiry, the AEC compiled a list of
all possible cases of enrolment fraud it has on record for the decade 1990-
2000. This list comprises 71 cases in total. Almost three-quarters of the
cases came from NSW (47 cases), while there were 18 cases in Queensland,
five in Victoria, three in the Northern Territory, three in Western
Australia, and one in South Australia.11 The AEC advised that the 71
cases of possible enrolment fraud were drawn to the attention of the AEC
in the following ways:
— AEC roll review procedures, including Continuous Roll Updating
(CRU) (35 cases);
— information provided by the public (15 cases);
— information provided by Members of Parliament (10 cases);
— information provided by other government agencies investigating other
offences (eight cases); and
— information from press reports (three cases).12
2.12 According to the AEC, the majority of cases it detected appear to have
been for the purposes of:
— identity fraud on the Commonwealth Electoral Roll for criminal
purposes, or to test the system;
____________________________
10 Commonwealth Law Enforcement Board. 1994. Best practice for fraud control: Fraud control policy
of the Commonwealth: Incorporating an Interim Ministerial Direction on fraud control. Canberra,
AGPS, p 3.
11 Submissions pp S974-S980 (AEC).
12 Submissions p S883 (AEC).
MANAGING THE ROLL 16
— enrolment forgery for the purposes of party preselection ballots and
local council elections; and
— false enrolments transferring the principal place of residence intended
to affect results at local council elections and federal elections.13
However, the AEC did not provide details of the numbers in each
category.
2.13 The AEC suggested that most cases of enrolment fraud are in support of
'criminal or nefarious intentions such as under-age entry to licensed
premises, immigration fraud, or social security fraud, or to "test the
system" ' 14 , rather than attempts to affect federal election results.
2.14 From these statistics, the AEC estimates that on average there is about one
fraudulent enrolment for every 200,000 enrolments.15 The AEC concedes
that there will always be a few cases of fraud that it cannot detect through
its own procedures, particularly cases of identity fraud.16
2.15 The Shepherdson Inquiry report was able to identify within the terms of
reference of that inquiry a series of cases of enrolment fraud, namely:
— Townsville in 1996;
— Mundingburra in 1996;
— East Brisbane in 1993;
— South Brisbane in 1986;
— Springwood in 1997;
— East Brisbane in 1996;
— the Budd family enrolments; and
— the Elder family enrolments.17
2.16 The number of false enrolments detected by the Shepherdson Inquiry in
each of these cases was not large, ranging from two (Mundingburra in
1996) to about 25 (Townsville in 1996). With the exception of
Mundingburra in 1996 and the Budd and Elder family enrolments, all of
____________________________
13 Submissions p S874 (AEC).
14 Submissions p S833 (AEC).
15 Transcript p 541 (AEC).
16 Submissions p S874 (AEC).
17 Queensland Criminal Justice Commission. April 2001. The Shepherdson Inquiry: An investigation
into electoral fraud. pp XIV-XVII. www.cjc.qld.gov.au/shepinquiry/finalreport.pdf.
MANAGING THE ROLL 17
these cases relate to internal party preselection ballots (see chapter 1). The
report indicated that:
The information gathered during the inquiry clearly established
that the practice of making consensual false enrolments to bolster
the chances of specific candidates in preselections was regarded by
some Party members as a legitimate campaign tactic. No
evidence, however, was revealed indicating that the tactic had
been generally used to influence the outcome of public elections.
Where it was found to have been used in public elections, the
practice appeared to be opportunistic or related to the family
circumstances of particular candidates rather than systemic or
widespread.18
2.17 Other witnesses to the committee's inquiry alleged that enrolment fraud
was far more extensive. Ms Karen Ehrmann, in her evidence before the
committee on 14 December 2001, indicated:
... Everyone was doing it. It was encouraged and condoned by
people at the highest level in the Queensland parliament and the
Labor Party ...19
2.18 Mr Robert Patching stated that, as Divisional Returning Officer (DRO) for
Rankin, in the late 1980s he uncovered 218 non-citizens who had
attempted to enrol.20 Mr Patching suggested that:
... if this figure can be extrapolated over an election period of 3
years it is possible that the number of persons gaining the right to
vote by fraudulently stating their enrolment qualifications could
be as many as 870 per election per division.21
2.19 In addition, in their evidence on 30 January 2001 in Sydney, Mr Steven
Simat and Mr Nick Berman both argued that the integrity of the roll could
not be guaranteed.22
2.20 During the inquiry, the committee also received evidence on a number of
allegations of fraudulent enrolment in NSW, in particular in relation to
local council elections.23 The committee did not investigate these
____________________________
18 Queensland Criminal Justice Commission. April 2001. The Shepherdson Inquiry: An investigation
into electoral fraud. Brisbane, CJC, p XIV. www.cjc.qld.gov.au/shepinquiry/finalreport.pdf
19 Transcript p 141 (K.Ehrmann).
20 Submissions p S653 (R.Patching)
21 Submissions p S653 (R.Patching)
22 Transcript pp 430 and 435 (S.Simat and N.Berman).
23 Submissions pp S392-S393 (C.Stott), pp S546-S551 (D.Harwin), pp S702-S703 (S.Simat),
pp S730-S743 (E.Brooks Maher), pp S1072-S1073 (R.Clark), and p S1277 (B.Horne).
MANAGING THE ROLL 18
allegations in any depth, and so cannot draw a conclusion on any of these
allegations.
2.21 The enrolment fraud uncovered by both the AEC and the Shepherdson
Inquiry occurred over a span of many years in diverse geographical
locations. In each case, the number of false enrolments was not large. In
comparison, the AEC notes that in the 1999-2000 financial year it
processed 2.46 million enrolment forms.24
2.22 The former Australian Electoral Commissioner, Professor Colin Hughes,
noted that substantial numbers of persons are needed in any attempt to
alter the roll so as to influence the outcome of a federal or state/territory
election.25 He stated that the ballots most vulnerable to fraudulent
enrolments are party preselections and by-elections.26 As by-elections
generally occur by themselves, Professor Hughes argues, that:
it is possible to concentrate all the resources of whatever group
seeks to violate the integrity of the by-election, whereas at a
general election they have to be spread thinly across the map, at
the very least over a substantial number of marginal seats.27
2.23 Professor Hughes noted that the possibility of overturning a general
election result and ejecting the elected government through a by-election
whose outcome was influenced by fraudulent enrolments has not
occurred at the federal level.28 However, he noted that the possibility has
occurred at the state level in the Queensland state seat of Mundingburra in
1996. 29
2.24 Whilst the allegations of fraudulent enrolment in Queensland have
achieved the most prominence, the evidence leads the committee to
believe that this practice is not confined to Queensland. Although this
practice does not occur on a large scale, the committee concurs with the
report of the Shepherdson Inquiry, in which the Hon Tom Shepherdson
QC stated:
... I do not consider that the small numbers of persons who
engaged in this practice, as disclosed by the evidence at the
Inquiry, should necessarily lead the Australian Electoral
Commission or the Electoral Commission Queensland to believe
____________________________
24 Submissions p S497 (AEC).
25 Submissions p S381 (C.Hughes).
26 Submissions p S382 (C.Hughes).
27 Submissions p S382 (C.Hughes).
28 Submissions p S384 (C.Hughes).
29 Submissions p S384 (C.Hughes).
MANAGING THE ROLL 19
that such conduct is relatively uncommon ... These unlawfully cast
votes can prove decisive in polls where the margin between
winning or losing is small.
30
2.25 Estimating the extent of potential fraud in any organisation, either public
or private, is inherently difficult.
31
This is why the agency fraud risk
assessment process is an important part of the Commonwealth's fraud
control work. Risk assessment enables agencies to identify potential
weaknesses in fraud controls and allows agencies to adjust resources and
control mechanisms.
32
The risk assessment is part of the fraud control
planning process and further details on this are contained in chapter 3.
2.26 The Fraud control policy of the Commonwealth makes it clear that chief
executives of agencies have a responsibility to make fraud control a major
responsibility of all staff.
33
An agency's attitude to fraud control is
therefore critical to its success in preventing it. The AEC indicated that in
relation to enrolment fraud, its normal processes were very good and that
it was confident it had a first class electoral roll.
34
2.27 The committee believes that the AEC has to be careful that it is not too
confident. A more circumspect attitude is more appropriate in the light of
the Shepherdson Inquiry and this inquiry's work. The AEC's attitude
leads the committee to question the adequacy of the AEC's assessment of
the risks in relation to the integrity of the electoral roll.
2.28 The issue at hand, then, is the adequacy of the AEC's procedures and the
Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 (the Electoral Act) to detect and prevent
fraudulent enrolment so that the Australian community can be confident
that enrolment fraud will not become a problem.
____________________________
30 Queensland Criminal Justice Commission. April 2001. The Shepherdson Inquiry: An investigation into electoral fraud. p 166. www.cjc.qld.gov.au/shepinquiry/finalreport.pdf
31 House of Representatives Standing Committee on Banking, Finance and Public
Administration. November 1993. Focusing on fraud: Report on the inquiry into fraud on the Commonwealth. Canberra, Commonwealth of Australia, pp 8-9.
32 Commonwealth Law Enforcement Board. 1994. Best practice for fraud control: Fraud control policy of the Commonwealth: Incorporating an Interim Ministerial Direction on fraud control. Canberra,
AGPS, p 17.
33 Commonwealth Law Enforcement Board. 1994. Best practice for fraud control: Fraud control policy of the Commonwealth: Incorporating an Interim Ministerial Direction on fraud control. Canberra,
AGPS, p 2.
34 Transcript p 545 (AEC).
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