Changed to title to the one used in the article since it is less click-bait-y. Useful article that goes through some of the misinformation about the voting process

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    On the eve of the Voice to Parliament referendum, misleading and inaccurate information about the electoral voting process remains rife on social media,  from misguided suggestions about voter identification and claims about the validity of ballot paper “ticks” and “crosses”.

    As fellow X users quickly pointed out, guidelines published by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) suggest the man’s vote would likely be counted as informal by polling officials.

    In another post to X last week and viewed more than 100,000 times, a user who had apparently enrolled as a postal voter claimed that the AEC had included Yes campaign material along with her ballot paper.

    Debate around the AEC’s stance on whether ticks and crosses would be counted as Yes and No votes respectively in the referendum was reignited this week as the Federal Court considered a legal challenge from the United Australia Party’s Clive Palmer and Senator Ralph Babet.

    Perhaps the most viral piece of problematic information to spread online in recent weeks regrettably came from the AEC itself, in the form of a post to X — viewed more than one million times on the platform — that lacked crucial context.

    Other social media users — some with hundreds of thousands of followers — shared the AEC’s original post alongside claims it proved the system was “easy to rig” and that “democracy is under attack”.


    The original article contains 1,233 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!