The Twitter account in defense of Australian democracy

“Isn’t it illegal?” He asked the other.

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) was posted on Twitter via torrent. Within minutes, the federal agency responded, describing the video as “false” and “disappointing”. The agency’s actions quickly forced Twitter to rate the cartoon as “fake” and Facebook and TikTok canceled it completely.

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Last month’s incident reflects a growing wave of disinformation Australia faces as it prepares to go to the polls on Saturday. But it also illustrates the benefits of a single agency overseeing the country’s electoral process.

“We are truly committed to defending Australian democracy,” said Evan Ekin-Smith, Head of AEC Digital Inclusion. “If we are not talking, we are not discussing elections, we are defending the popular idea of ​​democracy, then who is it?

Elections in the United States are controlled by partisan state and local officials. Add an electoral college, and as Americans learn in 2020, the system can sometimes feel chaotic and even prone to over-influence.

“There are huge and small differences in how electoral laws and regulations are governed in America,” said Pippa Norris, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Management. “It violates the fundamental principles of equality and consistency in electoral processes and voting rights, leads to extreme partisan views in the system and encourages many bad practices.”

On the contrary, the Australian electoral system is judged by analysts around the world.

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Ariadne Vromen, a political scientist at the Australian National University, noted that many other countries have independent electoral commissions.

“This is one of our good innovations along with mandatory voting,” he said. “People in Australia rely on these processes. “They may not feel particularly friendly or trust the political actors, the politicians themselves and the political parties, but they do trust the institutions.”

This trust is currently being tested.

The flow of disinformation that led to the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 did not save Australia. Ekin-Smith said that after the country’s last federal election in 2019, false claims about Australia’s elections increased rapidly. Some are imported from the United States.

“There are allegations that Dominion voting machines have been used,” he said, citing unsubstantiated claims made by former President Donald Trump and some of his advisers. “We don’t use Dominion’s voting machines. “We never had it, but people say we’re going to use it and the elections have been rigged,” he said.

As challenges change, so does the AEC.

When Ekin-Smith joined in 2011, AEC He didn’t even have a Twitter account. Ten years later, half a dozen people are helping him on Twitter at an uncertain rate – two dozen times an hour. He also has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube, collaborates with TikTok on the selection guide and hosts “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit.

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The goal is to resist false claims before they spread.

Ekin-Smith says, “We are not blind to the fact that social media moves incredibly fast.” She said. “And the action that social media can take is fantastic. However, the action we can take even faster by responding to our channels can be even more effective. “

“Mem games are pretty powerful,” Vromen said. “And informal language is really important. It’s personal. Use the daily engagement policies. And it’s something people will notice and share. “

Bad tweets sometimes provoke criticism from critics who think the AEC should be. more durableOR even in silence. But Ekin-Smith said it’s important to talk to people on their terms.

“We are a bunch of civil servants,” he said. “But most of Australia isn’t like that and they don’t sound like them, so why should we?”

As the elections approached, the AEC has received numerous complaints of false or misleading statements from influential candidates, parties or groups. It only organizes information about the political process, not about the political discourse.

“We cannot be the organizers of the truth for another party, a party or a candidate that talks about its politics, its history,” said Ekin-Smith. “We don’t have legislation that allows it. But if we made decisions on these issues, there would also be some practical and even perception problems. “

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For example, in March, a conservative lobby group created a floating billboard with a cartoon of Chinese President Xi Jinping voting for the center-left Labor Party in Australia. The AEC approached the group Change the billboard, not for the message, but to show Xi the ballot paper with a check. Australians must rank candidates or parties.

In the event of online misinformation, the agency should be careful not to respond in ways that reinforce it.

Ekin-Smith consulted with AEC’s legal and management teams before providing a response when far-right One Nation party released their video on April 29, falsely claiming that illegal votes had led to the election. Federal States of 2010.

“This comment on the electoral system is very disappointing” from twitter From the AEC report. “The registered parties are aware of the electoral integrity measures, including information / protest actions against deceased Australians and outbound mail screening checks.”

Some Twitter users complained that it wasn’t harsher, and Ekin-Smith used harsher language in his subsequent tweets. However, she did not want to spark a debate that would have spread the video even more.

Meanwhile, his colleagues reached out to social media companies who misdirected or deleted the video.

“It was probably one of the scariest specimens we’ve ever seen,” Ekin-Smith said. He said. “Some of the claims out there are completely false and have the potential to undermine people’s trust in the system.”

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He rejected suggestions that the AEC was unfair to a nation. The commission had no problems with the previous cartoons, and although these cartoons were useless, they did not mislead people about the electoral system. Someone actually explained the preferential vote well, he said.

On social media fueling tribalism, the AEC is urging all its employees, including 100,000 temporary workers in the elections, to sign a declaration of political neutrality.

“This is a huge responsibility,” Ekin-Smith said, “because a failed election, real or perceived, is potentially disastrous, as we have seen in other jurisdictions.”