Copy of letter sent to Marion Sawer, Australian National University
from Amy McGrath

January 4, 2004

Dr. Marion Sawer
Head Political Science Program
Research School of Social Sciences
Australian National University

Dear Dr. Sawer,

I have only just acquired a copy of the book of essays ‘Elections, Full, Free and Fair’ edited by you and published by Federation Press in 2001. I was astonished to discover that someone of your academic standing had made a sustained derogatory and derisory attack on myself in the two essays you contributed to this volume - first in footnote 4 on page 27 and second on pp. 229-30. I was even more astonished to discover that it consisted of a series of statements that are plain wrong. They are a glaring example of the slack, selective research and prejudiced argument currently condemned by conservative historians. They should have no place in a purported academic work.

Inaccuracies in footnote 4 on page 27 to Pacemakers for the World

1.      Today there is a Chapman Society created by Dr. Amy McGrath to counter what she regards as widespread fraudulent practices in voting.

·         I did not create the HS Chapman Society. Others did.

·         It was not created to advance such views.

·         The seven objectives of the HS Chapman Society do not mention any pursuit of ‘widespread fraudulent practices in voting,’

2.      It is named in honour of Chapman because his version of the secret ballot enabled the tracing of the vote to the voter in case it was later contested.

The Society was not named in honour of Chapman because of the form of the secret ballot he devised, but because he achieved the acceptance of the principle of a secret ballot for the first time in any Parliament in the world.

3.      Amy McGrath has published a number of books on the subject without producing any real evidence of abuse.

I had published exactly two at the time your book was published in 2001. One of these, the Forging of Votes was wholly on proven evidence of abuse in the famous Federated Ironworkers Case of Short vs Thornton, which caused the judge to find fraud, forgery and irregularities in a grand scale had occurred. The other Frauding of Votes? was a historic overview of electoral history. It cites a numbers of instances, which are attributed to other sources than myself.

4.      Dr McGrath proposed remedies would, as Colin Hughes has pointed out, operate to the detriment of relatively disadvantaged voters (Hughes 1998b).

These ‘proposed remedies’ appear, from the context, to refer to HS Chapman Society’s campaign for one remedy (not remedies in the plural) namely identification on enrolment, and the ‘disadvantaged voters’ young voters and aborigines. All such groups have requisite ID for welfare, pensions etc, and special arrangements can be made for those who do not as in Northern Ireland .

In any case, this attack on me for proposing an unfair discriminatory reform now looks extremely foolish, as all State Electoral Commissioners agreed to adopt ID on enrolment as proposed by ALP Victorian Premier Bracks in 2002 as did all parties in the Commonwealth Joint Standing Committee for Electoral Matters for enrolment, and for re-enrolment and provisional voting for those not on the electoral roll.

Inaccuracies on pp. 229-30 of Political Parties, Partisanship and Electoral Governance

1.      For some years a single-minded campaign has been conducted by Dr. Amy McGrath of the H.S Chapman Society to promote her belief that the Australian electoral system is lax and open to abuse and that qualifications for voters should be tightened.

I have not conducted a ‘single-minded campaign’ on the issue of ‘the Australian electoral system’. The pejorative word ‘single-minded’ is to suggest I have ‘no other  purpose in view.’ I have pursued the issue defined in our objective 6 with far more vigour viz ‘to support the fundamental principle of the secret ballot, the integrity of  the electoral roll and the public scrutiny of each stage of electoral process’.

Moreover it is unacceptable for you to speak loosely of an ‘Australian electoral  system.’ There are, in fact, nine electoral systems of the Commonwealth 6 States and 2 Territories which are our concern, and nine electoral administrations.

2.      Dr McGrath has found masses of anecdotal evidence of supposedly widespread fraud.

Where are the examples to back up such a gross false accusation in such a sweeping generalisation?  There are none because I have not been guilty of producing ‘masses of anecdotal evidence’ having been trained in history research in the years before historians and academics became careless about assertions without proof.

3.      Dr. McGrath has found sinister implications in everything from the printing of ballot papers by private companies to the posting of election results on the AEC web site.

Auditing and scrutineering by political parties are crucial for them to know that honesty in the electoral process not only exists to a 100% level, but is seen to exist. This becomes impossible when ballot papers are printed by 14 different companies in several states,  and election results being tallied in public are bypassed in favour of  a ‘virtual tally room’ on the AEC web site. What scrutiny then remains?

4.      She and her associates have made numerous submissions to the JSCEM, and her allegations have been subjected to exhaustive analysis by the AEC on a number of occasions as well as by former Australian Electoral Commissioner, Professor Colin Hughes. After allegations of 100’s of cases of multiple voting and impersonation in the seat of Macquarie in the 1993 federal election, the AEC investigated every allegation over a period of three months and provided sworn evidence to the Court of Disputed Returns that they were without substance.

No first year student in history in my day would receive a pass for such sweeping generalisations and defamatory implications without providing a list of instances to justify them or the names of my ‘associates’ with a definition of exactly what you mean by ‘associates’.

You do advance one example in proof of what you are asserting, that of the seat of Macquarie in the 1993 election. You claim the defeated candidate, Alisdair Webster, alleged ‘hundreds of cases of multiple voting and impersonation.’ In fact the burden of his case was that the number of false enrolments was greater than the 164 winning margin of votes for the ALP. The AEC’s investigation only accepted a lower number of enrolments as false than the 164 votes vital for challenge, and would not allow Mr. Webster to sight their list.

As to impersonation, over 200 unknowns did impersonate 200 non-voting Plymouth Brethren and Jehovah’s Witnesses, but Mr. Webster only found out about this after the time-limit for challenge in the Court of Disputed Returns.

Moreover the hands of the AEC were not clean. It had misdirected over 400 absent votes to several electorates outside his. Far from instituting proceedings itself, based on legal precedent on the State seat of The Entrance, NSW staff were ordered not to tell him. Six people could be found to swear affidavits as to the truth of this.

5.      In her many submissions to the JSCEM about alleged electoral fraud in the seat of Macquarie , Dr. McGrath has consistently failed to mention one salient fact. Mr. Alisdair Webster, the defeated candidate and associate of Dr. McGrath, was ordered by the defeated candidate to pay when he discontinued his allegations in the face of contrary evidence.

Mr. Webster did not discontinue the case because of ‘contrary evidence.’ In fact the Hon. Justice Gaudron found two substantial grounds on which he could continue. He discontinued because he could not afford to proceed. Nor did the Court require him to pay all the costs, only those of the ALP. The AEC had to pay its own.

Further I object to the insinuation that I, as a supposed  ‘associate’ of Mr. Webster, would be partisan in my judgement of his case. The truth is that I had merely interviewed him in the early years when I first advanced concerns about his case.

 6.      These cases (of fraudulent enrolment for preselections in Queensland) did not involve the kind of enrolment fraud persistently alleged by Dr. McGrath, namely impersonation and cemetery vote.

Where have you been, Dr. Sawer, during the Mundingburra State election, the Queensland electoral scandals, the admissions of Graham Richardson in the Bulletin about branch-stacking in south-west Sydney, the Channel 9 Sunday programs on branch-stacking in Victoria, and the disclosures of Bob Bottom in the Bribie Island region of Queensland? In the isolation of Canberra?

7.      Nevertheless, newsworthy stories concerning electoral ‘rorts’ have, like Dr. McGrath’s persistence, helped fuel partisan proposals for more restrictive approaches to voter eligibility.

You refer here to the deadlock on identification on enrolment between conservative and labour parties on identification on enrolment. Dr Sawer, you adopt a partisan attitude by advancing only the then ALP opposition case - disadvantage to young voters and aborigines. Unfortunately for your argument, State ALP governments withdrew their opposition in 2002, and the Commonwealth ALP opposition and minor parties in June 2003 when their representatives on the Joint Standing Committee of Electoral Matters assented to a unanimous report in favour of such identification. 

 8.      (The footnote to this says ‘the word ‘rort is an Australianism used since at least 1980 to refer to  manipulation of membership records for Labor Party preselection purposes.)

A rort, according to the Macquarie dictionary has other definitions than the above.

·         - an incident, or a series of incidents involving reprehensible or suspect behaviour  
    especially by officials or politicians to take wrongful advantage of; abuse: to rort the system.

·         - the systematic manipulation of a system to gain advantage fraudulently

I am troubled with the doubt whether you, like some officials in the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), have ever actually been involved in the active process of running an election on the battlefield down at booth level. If you had, then you would be far too sceptical of the AEC’s damaging global attacks on myself than to embrace them as you have in your references in Elections, Full, Fair and Free. One thing is inarguable, your attacks on me are in no way ‘Full, Fair and Free.’

(Signed) Amy McGrath

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