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The Australian Electoral Commission is investigating a complaint that a Liberal Party volunteer helped elderly people with dementia to vote in a mobile polling booth at a nursing home in Kew, in Melbourne’s inner-east.
Key points:
- A man visiting his mother said a party volunteer entered a temporary voting booth
- The Victorian head of the AEC has said he will follow up the complaint
- The residents were voting within the federal electorate of Kooyong
Ian Smith, whose 96-year-old mother has dementia, said he was shocked and appalled yesterday to see a Liberal Party volunteer enter the temporary booth to assist at least a dozen confused residents, assisting them with filling out the Senate ballot paper.
“It’s completely breaking the rules … I thought, ‘this is just wrong’,” he said.
“I could hear her saying: ‘Here’s our how to vote card, here is how we recommend how you vote.’
“In many cases she would then stay [in] the booth helping them fill it out — they were saying ‘so where do I put the number?’.
“I [later] heard at least one elderly resident say to the nursing home staff: ‘What’s going on here? Are you promoting the Liberal Party?’ Because the amount of involvement the volunteer had was really quite obvious.”
He was particularly concerned that AEC staff had motioned the volunteer over to help residents with the Senate ballot paper.
“They [AEC staff] would say ‘you have to number one to six on the top line or one to 12 below that, but that’s all we can tell you, we can’t help you any further’,” he said.
“I presume they were well-intentioned in asking the Liberal Party volunteer to then help elderly and confused relatives, but they should know it’s against the rules.
“In retrospect I thought I should have stepped in and said, ‘look I’m concerned about what’s happening here’; it’s only when I went away I thought that should really not be happening.”
The aged care home sits within federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s electorate of Kooyong, where he is fighting to hold onto his seat against two high-profile challengers in Greens candidate Julian Burnside and independent Oliver Yates.
At the Victorian election last November, Labor unexpectedly seized the state seat of Hawthorn, which falls within Kooyong and which former Liberal MP John Pesutto had held with a margin of more than 8 per cent.
‘It shouldn’t have transpired’: AEC
The Victorian manager of the Australian Electoral Commission, Steve Kennedy, told ABC Radio Melbourne that party campaign workers were not allowed within six metres of a polling booth, including mobile booths at nursing homes.
“It shouldn’t have transpired … I’d like to follow that up to make sure it doesn’t reoccur,” he said.
Mr Smith said he had been a member of the Labor Party in the 1970s but would be equally concerned about campaigners of any political persuasion being allowed into polling booths with vulnerable voters.
“Maybe I just encountered a volunteer who was very enthusiastic, but I think they’re underhanded [tactics],” he said.
“If you repeat that across the number of aged care homes that there are in [the federal electorate of] Kooyong, and there are a lot, then they’re potentially harvesting quite a lot of votes that way, by breaking the rules.”
The Liberal Party was contacted for comment.
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