CAIRNS News election expert Lex Stewart believes corruption among high-level officers within the Australian Election Commission could be the reason for mysterious counter-trend swings to the Labor Party at the 2025 election.
Stewart says that by the laws of statistics swings for and against the major parties should be divided about equally in elections, however during the last election there was a steady increase in the two-party- preferred swing towards the ALP.
“On primary votes the ALP got only 34.6%, but on a two-party-preferred (TPP) basis they got 55.2%, an increase of 3.1%,” he said.
“Strange it is that during the vote counting a steady increase in that TPP swing towards the ALP occurred.
“Just after the 3 May election, the TPP swing was 2.5%, then on 21 May it was 2.7%, and it finished up as 3.09%, which I round to 3.1% for easier memorising.”
“Strange that this swing towards the ALP always happens! By the laws of statistics it should be the case that for half of the elections the swing would increase towards the coalition, and half towards the ALP.
“I affirm that over 99% of AEC employees are honest people, but I have clashed with senior officials in the AEC for over 20 years, and I consider that a few of them are corrupt and pro-ALP.
“I suggest that a few corrupt AEC officers could have amended a few pencil ballot papers, and/or simply removed a few.
“That is what happened you may remember in the WA Senate election of 2013. A mere 1,570 senate ballot papers among a total of 1.5miliion went missing, with the result that the sixth Senator elected became a Green rather than a minor right wing party.
“Psephologist Antony Green said that if these few ballot papers had gone missing among 96% of the ballot papers then it would not have affected the result, but they needed to have gone missing among about 4% of the ballot papers in order at alter the outcome.”
Stewart says in the election he scrutineered in three years ago, he detected amending of pencil numbers on ballot papers in the many thousands of pre-poll votes in the electorate of Cowper, where he lives.
This was detailed in his submission to a parliamentary committee, a submission that was ignored and not even mentioned in the committee’s report.
Federal Parliament resumes on 22 July, with 94 MPs of the ALP, out of a total 150 MPs in the House of Representatives. The 94 is a gain of 17 from the previous 77.
Stewart notes there will be only 43 coalition MPs (a loss of 15). “The Liberal Party suffered severe losses, but all nine National Party MPs were re-elected. In Queensland a few LNP MPs lost their seats.
The cross bench is 1 Green, 1 Katter, 1 Centre Alliance and 10 independents, most of whom are Teals.
The Greens’ primary votes remained the same at 12.2% in the House of Representatives and 11.7% in the Senate – down 0.9%.
