Labor has accused the Liberal Party of deliberately using the official colours of the Australian Electoral Commission to mislead Chinese-speaking voters in a marginal seat, despite the AEC stating the posters are within the laws.
The posters, which were written in Mandarin and have appeared at booths in the Melbourne seat of Chisholm, state the "correct" way to vote is to preference the Liberal candidate first.
A photo taken by Victorian Trades Hall secretary Luke Hilakari showed a poster printed in the purple and white colours of the AEC tied to a fence next to an official AEC voting banner.
The text of the poster appears to be written in the style of an official instruction to voters:
"Correct way to vote.
"On the green voting card, put preference 1 next to the Liberal Party. The other boxes can be numbered from smallest to highest."
Australian Labor Party state secretary Kosmos Samaras has confirmed to the ABC that the party lodged a formal complaint with the AEC.
AEC state manager Steve Kennedy has told the ABC that the commission has considered the complaint and found the posters did not breach election laws.
"Whilst the AEC would prefer that parties or lobby groups don't use the colour purple, the AEC doesn't own the colour purple and there is nothing restricting the use of this," he said.
The Liberal Party has declined to comment.
Both the major parties are running female Chinese-Australian candidates in the seat of Chisholm after it was vacated by Liberal-turned-independent Julia Banks.
Roughly 20 per cent of the population in the electorate, in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, are of Chinese ancestry.
The battle for the seat is likely to come down to the Liberal Party's Gladys Liu and Labor's Jennifer Yang.
I'm not a political animal, but even I can see this is woefully wrong.
How does this not breach election laws?
@imastawka wrote:Oh, that's okay then?????
Screen sized to 300% says it's authorised by the Liberal Party.
Can't read who, though.
it's not OK by me stawka.. but because of that authorization, the AEC said it was OK... even though the sign was in their colours and placed next to the AEC sign to make it look like the AEC was telling people how to vote 
it says.. authorized by Simon Frost Liberal Patry of Australia (Victorian division) then the address and name of the printer
@k1ooo-slr-sales wrote:
I challenge anyone to explain to me how a vote could be erased/changed while the count goes on, remembering that scrutineers write down the totals and these would have to match the official AEC totals that are shown on the AEC website for every polling booth. I am sure if the scrutineer totals differed from the AEC totals a complaint would be lodged by the aggrieved party.
I just looked at the AEC website and they now have the booth by booth totals for each electorate. These were the totals I referred to in my previous post.
Here is a link to the first booth (alphabetically) in my electorate showing the first preference and two party preferred tally:
https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HousePollingPlaceFirstPrefs-24310-4934.htm
These would have been totalled at the booth before the ballot papers were returned to an AEC office. Scrutineers would have had access to these before the papers left the booth, again reinforcing the validity of the vote even though pencils were used at the booth.
Spoiler
for those who don’t want to click the link:
