Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has again raised the spectre of election integrity as the Coalition begins to come to terms with its drubbing at the ballot box.
In an interview that grabbed attention for her fiery rebuke of an association with Donald Trump, the Country Liberal Party politician alluded to something happening at “remote polling booths” that had been reported to the Australian Electoral Commission.
Price spoke to the ABC after the polls had closed on the east coast and word of the Coalition’s lacklustre performance had started to roll in.
When the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson asked Price whether her “embrace of Donald Trump and Make Australia Great” had hurt the campaign, the senator called on the ABC to investigate something that she said the AEC had been alerted to.
“If you want to take things seriously, perhaps send an investigative journalist and watch what is happening in remote polling booths,” she said.
“The AEC has been alerted to this over and over and does little with it. I urge the ABC, as a taxpayer-funded organisation, to go out and see what is occurring,” she said.
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Price’s office did not respond to a request to clarify her statements.
Her comments echo a similar statement made shortly after the Voice to Parliament referendum in 2023.
“I think we probably need to look at the way the AEC, the [Northern Territory Electoral Commission]conduct themselves when it comes to remote polling at elections, at referendums,” she said.
“There is a lot that goes on in remote communities that the rest of Australia doesn’t get to see. If we had cameras in those remote communities, at those polling booths, Australia would see what goes on within those communities. There’s a lot of manipulation.”
The AEC rejected these claims at the time. “The ability to campaign at any polling place, including in remote communities, was of course the same for everyone,” a spokesperson told Guardian Australia. The AEC has been contacted for comment following Price’s most recent allegations.
Electoral fraud complaints have been made on the fringes of previous Australian elections, but have become a major part of US Republican politics.
The AEC’s electoral integrity assurance taskforce reported no interference after the last election.
Are you worried the AEC is missing remote voter interference?
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