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The story of Albert Langer
In 1996, Albert Langer was jailed for telling people how to vote. Langer was a
member of the Neither! campaign, which argued that voters shouldn't have to direct
their preferences to parties they didn't agree with. They said that voters could
legally vote 1 for a party of their choice, and then put a 2 in each of the other
boxes, thereby stopping their preferences from flowing on to the major parties
when they didn't want them to. This was particularly aimed at supporters of minor
parties, who might not want to see their votes ultimately go to Labor or the Coalition,
as it usually does for all votes in the House of Representatives.
The Australian Electoral Commission wasn't very happy with this campaign. While
it argued that Langer had the right to vote this way, he should not be encouraging
others to do so. The Victorian Supreme Court ultimately agreed and then ordered
that Langer be jailed for contempt of court when he continued his campaign after
being ordered to stop. When Langer was sent to prison Amnesty International declared
him Australia's first prisoner of conscience for more than twenty years, and called
for his release.
In the end, Albert Langer only served three weeks of a ten week term because the
Federal Court ruled the Victorian Supreme Court's sentence had been too severe.
AEC figures show that around 46 000 votes were exhausted during the 1996 House
of Representatives election, an increase of over 500 percent on the number of
exhausted votes in the 1993 election. Albert Langer thanked the AEC for the publicity
his advocated method of voting received following the action taken against him.
The Electoral Act has since been amended. Section 240 was changed to say that
voters need to number the boxes in order and without repeating any numbers.
Interestingly though, the section which outlawed Langer from encouraging people
to vote this way has also been repealed. Instead the law now says it is only an
offence to print or publish material which may deceive or mislead a voter.
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