British High Commission

• A referendum to recognise First Nations Australians in Australia’s Constitution by establishing a Voice to Parliament will be held later this year.
• This is focused on disinformation about the referendum process rather than fact-checking claims made about the Voice.
• Several media outlets including RMIT ABC Fact Check, AAP Fact Check and AFP Fact Check are publishing articles fact-checking claims about the Voice.

Telling lies is legal

• It is perfectly legal to spread misinformation and disinformation and tell outright lies about the proposed constitutional amendment, just as it is legal to tell lies during federal election campaigns.
• While Australia has laws banning businesses from engaging in deceptive and misleading advertising about their products and services, there are no equivalent federal laws that apply to politics.

Parliament decided to allow lies during the referendum campaign

• The federal parliament passed up an opportunity to ban misinformation and disinformation during the referendum campaign.
• The committee said “the forthcoming referendum is not the right time to establish a truth-in-political-advertising regime”.

How do truth in political advertising laws operate?

• Those laws work by making it unlawful for political advertisers to make purported statements of fact that are misleading to a material extent.
• Importantly, these laws don’t seek to stop people expressing their opinions, even the most silly and uninformed opinions.
• The law allows the Electoral Commission to request that misleading advertisements be taken down and a retraction issued.
• Read more:
  A Voice to Parliament will not give 'special treatment' to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.

Do these laws actually work?

• The most important goal of truth-in-political-advertising laws is to improve political practice and promote a better political culture.
• Federal parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters says “lies, misinformation and disinformation are spreading at an exponential rate” and that the South Australian model of truth-in-political-advertising laws is “successful”.

• A number of court cases are still being pursued against the election outcomes from votes cast earlier this year, but these aren’t expected to affect the inauguration.
• As a political scientist who studies elections and observed the elections, I believe there are five takeaways from the elections that need to be addressed before the next general elections in four years’ time.

Electoral violence has not gone away

• Nigeria has a long history of violence during elections and it sadly manifested again in 2023.
• A newspaper puts deaths from the 2023 elections at 39 while the European Union at a media briefing claimed 21.
• Violence marred the elections in parts of the country: Lagos, Delta, Kogi and Kano States.

Voters’ suppression was the name of the game

• Also known as deliberate disenfranchisement of eligible voters, this is a strategy designed to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing voters from voting.
• Alternatively, some Nigerian politicians have resorted to voter suppression to undermine their political rivals.
• Voter suppression was also recorded in Abia, Borno, Delta, Edo, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano, Kebbi, Kogi, Nasarawa, Ogun, Sokoto, and Rivers States.

Ethnic politics on the rise

• The elections further heightened ethnic resentment and tension, especially in Lagos State.
• Ethnic politics has been a bane of Nigeria politics for long.
• The Labour Party, a relatively unpopular party, defeated the ruling APC in Lagos State during the 25 February presidential election.

Low voter turnout

• Voter turnout refers to the percentage of people who actually take part in an election relative to the total number of registered voters.
• In an earlier article, I identified five reasons why the voter turnout was low.

Technology is not enough

• The outcome of the elections showed also that the deployment of technology is not enough.
• While voter accreditation was largely carried out with the Bimodal device, the electoral commission’s failure to carry out real time transmission of the presidential election results created room for alleged result manipulation.

Conclusion

• Perpetrators and financiers of electoral violence should be arrested and diligently prosecuted in order to deter others who see violence as a viable pathway to electoral victory.
• Political leaders should also tone down their vitriol to whittle down the charged political atmosphere that is capable of rail-roading Nigeria to the 1994 Rwanda experience.

• For the first time this year, voters in England will need to show a form of Photo ID in some elections, including the upcoming local elections.
• Political parties build on this information with direct interviews with members of the public, with publicly available data such as census data and by buying data from data broking companies.
• You have the right to be confident that political parties handle your personal information responsibly and in line with good practice.
• If you’re unhappy with how your data is being used, we have guidance to help you raise a concern.

• This controversial new rule was brought in on the insistence that the “integrity of elections” needs to be protected.
• But it has the potential to prevent many people from taking part in elections.
• I found both Conservative and Labour MPs agreed that the number of reported voter fraud cases is small.

Increasing already high confidence?

• Conservative MPs also often argued that voter ID is needed to strengthen public confidence in the electoral system.
• In fact, more people agree there are sufficient safeguards in place to prevent electoral fraud than those who don’t.
• Most people believe barriers to democratic participation for minority ethnic groups pose more of a problem than electoral fraud.

Voters pay the price

• Unlike most countries where a government ID is required to vote, Great Britain has no widely adopted free or low-cost ID option.
• Concerns have been raised that asking prospective voters to show photo ID to cast their ballot might make it harder for people from minority backgrounds and those who are less well-off to participate in elections.
• This is interesting since Conservative MPs consistently portrayed voter ID as a benefit to all British voters and therefore positioned themselves as speaking for the electorate.
• Voters can now apply for a free voter ID but a government-commissioned survey conducted in 2022 found that less than half of those without the correct ID said they would apply to get a free voter ID card.