Transcript

(This transcript is partly AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.)

National Security Podcast

So before our election, we put out some guidance that basically asked the political parties to first of label anything they did which was AI generated and second, not to use AI to mislead. But notice we didn't say, use AI because actually I think it's coming. It'll be used. It's a potentially democratic tool. You're listening to the National Security Podcast, the show that brings you expert analysis, insights and opinion on the national security challenges facing Australia and the Indo-Pacific. Produced by the ANU National Security College.

Rory Medcalf

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm Rory Medcalf, Head of the ANU National Security College. Today's podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people and I pay my respects to their elders past and present. Today I'm joined by Vijay Rangarajan, the Commissioner of the UK Electoral Commission and Tom Rogers, the Australian Electoral Commissioner, for a conversation on electoral integrity and security in our democratic systems. Welcome, Vijay and Tom.

Vijay Rangarajan

Thank you very much.

Tom Rogers

Hi Rory.

Rory Medcalf

It's a great pleasure to welcome you both here on the podcast for a couple of reasons. One is, of course, that in recent years, the integrity of democratic systems has become increasingly, I think, a vital item on the national security agenda and for the work of the National Security College. We actually see it as part of our core business to do what we can to educate the community, educate policymakers as well about that key pillar of national security. But also, I think Tom, in your case as Australian Electoral Commissioner, you've been, I think, a great friend of the work of the college and we've very much valued the work that we've done with the Electoral Commission over the years to really bolster Australia's security, our democratic values, our interests in this regard. I guess Tom, for you this is a little bit of a swan song because we know that you'll be concluding your term at the end of the year. So, thanks very much for making time to be with us. Vijay, you're visiting Australia and this is, I understand, certainly your first visit as the Electoral Commissioner of the United Kingdom. I suspect you're personally a little bit new to the way Australia operates in this space having studied it from afar. But now, of course, you're on a, I think, a really welcome visit to take a look at our electoral systems and processes. I'd love to hear, to begin with, a few thoughts about what's brought you here.

Vijay Rangarajan

poly interests, but also you've got a very good electoral commission, if I may say so, and a fascinating system. We share such a lot of similarities in our system, but some really intriguing differences. We also share broadly the same set of threats, and we'll come back to that, because I think that sense of preparing for mitigating against all the threats which democratic systems around the world are facing at the moment is crucial. We don't have elections that often. I mean, we just had a general election on the 4th of July. There's a lot of learning that went into that and a lot that's come out of that. But I think looking at other people's elections as well, the kind of rapid growth of misinformation, of AI, of all sorts of things going on, but also just societal changes in all of our countries means we've got to be thinking about “how do we maintain what are already pretty high levels of trust in our democratic process, but not be complacent about it?” This doesn't happen automatically and we can't just take it for granted. So there's a lot of work to make sure we can maintain trust, look at what the risks are, get ahead of them if we can. It's very traditional national security work in many ways. But I think one thing that I found really new and both Tom and I have been in this process has been a broadening community around elections. If I may say so, think it used to be quite a specialised sport, it was a small but select group of people who were looking at elections, running elections and doing them. But now, as you said Rory, quite a lot of people in the national security community and more broadly are thinking about this, partly because of the challenges, partly because I think this is a kind of whole-of-government, even whole-of-society effort to maintain our democracy.

Rory Medcalf

It would be great to, I guess, drill into those, I think, very broad principles and yet a sense of the similarities and differences of the UK and the Australian experience. But maybe first, Vijay, if we can get a sense of you, of who we're talking to as a guest here in Australia. You've come to the role as Electoral Commissioner, I think, or Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission in the UK earlier this year, just in time for the general election. Maybe a sense of what was your personal journey professionally and why did you take on this role?

Vijay Rangarajan

So originally, a long time ago, I was an academic and a physicist. And then I joined the British Civil Service, 30 years, almost 30 years, mostly in the British Foreign Office. And then we became FCDO when we merged in our development branch. I guess my main specialties were European politics. I spent a long time in Brussels and America, all the Americas. I was ambassador in Brazil, some time in Mexico, obviously a lot with the US as well. And then latterly I was doing, and bear the scars of all of this, COVID response and lot of work on climate change. And as I said, bilateral relations with this region, including Australia. So a kind of wide career there. The thing that really sparked my interest in our electoral commission was I had a period in our Ministry of Justice and Cabinet Office working on constitutional issues. And we were going through a period of constitutional change then including elections, setting up our Supreme Court, and the Fixed-Down Parliaments Act, and many other things. And so when this opportunity came up, it was fantastic to have the opportunity to apply and get the job. Now I came in, and I feel slightly under false pretences, thinking, “I've got months to prepare for a general election. I can get my head around it. I can really do it.” And then, of course, the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the time announced a general election, which did come quite as a shock.

Rory Medcalf

I was in London that day. I was rained on by the same rain.

Vijay Rangarajan

So the rain was falling, Rishi Sunak announced it and what was fantastic I'm sure the same in the AEC was, you know, the Electoral Commission of the UK, we all came together as a team including all of the electoral administrators and basically delivered an election that was only a few months after the May, the May local election so people were quite tired. And one thing in our system is it's hyper local. It's effectively 650 very local elections, all run locally. The campaigning is very local and it really was a feature this time. And of course the count and everything is again extremely local, done very rapidly at the end of that Thursday overnight. And then in every area, everyone stands up, the winner is announced and the losers all ascend, which is a really important part of our system.

Rory Medcalf

So Tom, you're hosting Vijay here in Australia. And of course, we're getting ready for a federal election in Australia before long. We anticipate, I guess, early next year.

Tom Rogers

I thought you might tell me the date, Rory. I thought you might have some inside information.

Rory Medcalf

The National Security College has intelligence everywhere, but sadly not on this one. Tom, you've been a strong advocate, I guess, of ensuring that understanding the integrity of elections is a whole-of-nation concern, that it connects with the security agenda in a way that's very inclusive of the rights and interests of all Australians. You're hosting Vijay’s visit here in Australia. Love to hear a little bit about the itinerary and the purpose.

Tom Rogers

It's really important, I think, that as democracies we share, knowledge, learnings, we face the same issues. The scale might be different. The vectors might be slightly different but the threats are essentially the same. Vijay gave a great presentation earlier this year as you'll remember Rory at the Canberra series on electoral integrity virtually. And it's just so important that we understand where other democracies are heading. I spoke to Vijay and it became clear that he was prepared to come out, share information and it is a sharing. It's a two-way street and he's here we’re looking at couple of local elections that happened to be running at the same time. Vijay went and visited the ACT election earlier this week. We've met some of our security and intelligence partners, the Electoral Integrity Assurance Task Force. We're visiting the Queensland Electoral Commission later in the week. But also we're spending a bit of time talking about some of those processes that I think we do well, particularly managing the role, our reputation management process. The one thing I think that binds us, Rory, is that electoral processes in democracies are actually all about the loser, rather than the winner. I know that sounds odd, but it's about running a process where the loser is prepared to accept the outcome of the elections, that trust bit. And that's the bit we share and we're spending a lot of time this week talking about that issue.

Rory Medcalf

That's a theme I might try to come back to at the end, thinking about a few elections that are on the horizon and not necessarily in this country. I'm really glad you mentioned the Canberra series, Tom, because of course that was an event we were pleased to co-host with the Electoral Commission a few months ago and I was very struck by the range of really Electoral Administrators that you had out here for that. We had our friends from Sweden, from Canada, from New Zealand, from various countries across the South Pacific and Vijay, I think you joined us remotely because you were rather busy at the time, understandably, think.

Vijay Rangarajan

Unexpectedly so. I was hoping to be in person, but it couldn't actually happen.

Rory Medcalf

But look, I'm glad that you've made the journey. Obviously, we're recording this sort of early in your visit. I think it's the 16th of October today. So, there may be some reflections you'll have afterwards. But I guess as things stand, any impressions you can share with us of what you've seen so far in Australia?

Vijay Rangarajan

I think what I'm really bringing is a bit of the lived experience of our election. I think what I see, what I'm sure you all see, is very vibrant democracies. I think that's the first thing I'll just start with. What's our real purpose here? It's to have the open political, pretty robust but vibrant debate in a way that includes people, maximum number of people, who then go and vote and make an honest political choice. And that's the core of it. Some of the threats are to the integrity or the trust in the process, but some are to the actual participation as well. I think one of the things we had in our election was a significantly increased amount of abuse and intimidation of candidates. Now, there's an element of that which is online trolling and abuse going on. Maybe that's shifting a little bit onto the offline in real life. If you feel comfortable saying something anonymously to your elected representative. You may feel a bit more confident than saying it to their face. That's a problem. And it's a problem not because it's when it is vibrant debate, but when it gets into straightforward abuse of a candidate outside their home or their family. And that's something that I think if you were to ask many of our politicians, and we do a big post poll survey, we ask all the candidates, we ask all the MPs, “how was it for you?” And we're in the process of collating a big report, which we will put out in the middle of November on what worked and what didn't. We do that every time. I think the other big similarity which we share with the AEC is we're continually learning and improving and building up the processes as time goes on. But this abuse, intimidation is one of the themes. And I think we're seeing it in other elections around the world. The worry about that, apart from just the sheer nastiness of some of the interactions, is it puts people off being candidates. And so do think one of the longer term things here, voters need to trust the system. But candidates, those who put themselves forward for political office, need to feel comfortable doing so, and they and their families do, or else we end up with a very narrow pool of people, and we're not giving voters the choice that they deserve. So that's a longer-term thing, which Tom and I have been discussing with many of our colleagues. How do we actually keep this going and make sure that democracy stays both, the words I'm choosing are careful, robust, vibrant but not nasty, aggressive, or even physical violence. And we had some instances of that. Thankfully, you have not had what we had, which was the murder of several MPs. So we're really sensitive to this and thinking very hard about how can we maintain civility in our politics.

Rory Medcalf

So Vijay, you're being diplomatic and not commenting on Australia. Tom, when you hear that, what does it make you think about the challenges in this country? You know, speaking personally, I'm thinking obviously about the forthcoming federal election as well as other elections, state and local elections. I'm also thinking about the social cohesion challenges we've obviously had in this country as well as the impact of disinformation, all of it. What are your concerns?

Tom Rogers

Very similar to what Vijay said, we've seen a rise in what I term as incivility online. And also threats against our own workers. And I think Rory, you and I have talked about this previously. It's a concern. We're seeing in some cases our workers being filmed in polling places. There was some outrageous behaviour at the last electoral event, the referendum and the election before that.

Rory Medcalf

So this is the voice referendum last week.

Tom Rogers

Indeed. And even in one of the state elections, the New South Wales election run by the New South Wales Electoral Authority, citizens being filmed and even our workers being filmed, even followed home and being filmed and their faces put online with messages like, my name is X and I'm a vote thief. It's just outrageous behaviour and an increase in threats. So we're seeing the same thing and in fact we've learnt some stuff from what Vijay's team have done. We're taking candidate safety a little more seriously as well. mean, the Australian Federal Police have always taken that seriously. They do a great job. But we would like to provide more resources to candidates as well so that they understand where they can go if they feel that they've been defamed or under threat. We can't necessarily get involved in that, but we can certainly provide resources and the Electoral Integrity Assurance Task Force is currently collating some additional resources for those candidates. So, the same sorts of issues with making sure that civility remains a key part of the interaction between the citizen and the electoral worker. Now the corollary to that is that if there's no civility in the debate about the politics itself that then has an impact on our workers. So we always encourage civil debate and civility is a critical part of that. We're seeing obviously with the rise of misinformation, can become incredibly toxic and we're concerned about that as well.

Rory Medcalf

Do we have the infrastructure and the resources we need in this country to deal with those challenges? What more can be done?

Tom Rogers

I think from an AEC perspective, we are operating at the very edges of our capability and luckily it's working. I think you know Rory, last year we were rated as the number one agency for trust and satisfaction of Commonwealth agencies and consistently nine out of ten Australians tell us they trust us to count the votes the way that they're cast. Now that's not a fluke, same as Vijay said before, we work on that. We've got our reputation management system and a whole range of things underneath that process. The debate right now about mis- and disinformation and truth in political advertising is complex. Parliament's got some strong views on that. In fact, I'm appearing before a committee I think tomorrow and Vijay's got to join not as a witness in the audience of that debate. There's been some discussion about whether the AEC should become the arbiter of truth at election time. We're pushing back against that.

Rory Medcalf

Why?

Tom Rogers

And I'm conscious here, I don't want to... direct parliament or seem to be influencing parliament. But if parliament tells us to it, we'll do it. But here's my concern. If we become the arbiter of truth, elections are a contest of ideas and one person's truth at election time can be another person's mistruth. The day we have to pronounce on a statement by a major political party, you can imagine the level of vitriol that will be put towards the AEC. And people have said to me, well, “if you're the most trusted agency, we give you that responsibility, that trust will flow into that decision.” I think it'll be like one of those reverse sewerage valves that actually it'll flow back the other way and will really damage our reputation. I don't know, Vijay might have a slightly different view.

Vijay Rangarajan

Yeah, it's a very good question. I don't think anyone's got the tools yet because we don't quite know how this threat and it is a threat I think on misinformation is going to mutate. I mean, in a way, it's not a new one. It's not exactly the case that elections in the past have been, you know, zones of perfect truth because they clearly haven't. What I think we are seeing this time is a degree of polarization and different bubbles of truth almost or mistruth floating rather separately. It's a little bit less that binds it together. It can be augmented then by obviously social media and by AI and by other tools, but I think they're just tools for it. But they're not necessarily all just tools for bad. So we have seen AI used rather well by some candidates in other countries as a way to explain their political platforms as a way to make sure they're reaching the largest number of voters truthfully. So before our election, we put out some guidance that basically asked the political parties to first of label anything they did, which was AI generated, and second, not to use AI to mislead. But notice we didn't say, don't use AI, because actually I think it's coming. It'll be used.

Tom Rogers

It's a potentially a democratic tool.

Vijay Rangarajan

Exactly.

Rory Medcalf

Interestingly, this has some analogies with the way we're addressing AI and the education sector and students' assessments, but that's another conversation.

Vijay Rangarajan

But I do think there is a challenge around the world. Now, some countries are facing this in more and more acute ways than even we are. And I do think part of the answer is on this democratic debate. A lot of ideas get exposed. Part of it is freedom of expression. Part of it is a vibrant national media that can really show this and show what the debate is. And part of it, and crucially, is education of citizens and voters. And so one of, think, our answers to this, and I say we don't have all the answers and we are not, we're in a very similar position to the AEC. We don't think political free speech can or should be properly regulated because that really weakens the actual democratic process itself. But we do think educating voters as much as possible to spot when something is misinformation, to spot when someone's basically trying to have them on, is really important. There is one exception to that. If, and we made this very plain during our general election, if we saw mis- or disinformation or just error about the electoral process, then we jumped in very fast, very authoritatively, I hope, and loudly to make sure that voters got the right information on that. And we did see some and we did jump in and try to put any problems in context and make sure people knew that these were the process to do so their vote could be validly cast and counted. So that's the area where I think we have a clear remit and we all want to jump in. But when it comes into judging political free speech, that is incredibly difficult, very much for the same reasons as Tom has just set out.

National Security Podcast

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Tom Rogers

Look, we're in complete lockstep with everything that Vijay just said and I'd go a little further... Again, I'm conscious of Parliament's current debate about this issue, but I don't think we can regulate or censor our way to getting people to believe what you want them to believe. Ideas have to be put into the public square for debate and people have to persuade others with the exception that, as Vijay just said, of factually incorrect information about the electoral process. But even that, we're very conscious that some of the wackiest tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theories that we've seen, people really believe them. A lot of people are gripped with this. So when you are trying to dissuade them of some of those views, you've got to be a bit careful because you can actually reinforce rather than dissuade. And if you just allow me to use probably a poor analogy, I've been saying to people it's a bit like saying that misinformation is a thunderstorm and regulation is seeking to give every citizen a raincoat. Well, we know some citizens don't wear raincoats and some citizens wear the wrong raincoats and they think they're good with all of that. Educating the public is about telling them about whether they should go out in that rain or not, where the rain comes from, what they should do about it. So, education in digital and media literacy is the number one thing we should be doing as a country. We should be doing it now. We're already pushing that with our Stop and Consider campaign, but we need to do more. And I think that's a really effective vector for us.

Rory Medcalf

And of course, that's a much bigger job than the Electoral Commissions.

Tom Rogers

It's a national issue, Rory.

Rory Medcalf

Yeah, so sort of civic literacy, media literacy, and presumably has to start at a young age.

Tom Rogers

Absolutely. Yesterday, Vijay, join me when we went to our National Electoral Education Centre over, over the road and he saw kids actually looking at some of those issues and it's a really successful way of doing it but we need a national campaign, we need it quickly and urgently.

Vijay Rangarajan

So Rory, you asked me and you started being diplomatic not commenting on the Australian system, I'll you two bits of Australian system I am envious of. First of all, what I saw yesterday which was the education. Now we are going to be stepping up our work on that, there's a lot to learn I think from what the AEC has done. But having a centre like that is fantastic and the enthusiasm of some of the school kids that I saw then and some of the questions that they asked were fantastic. So that is really great. The other thing, just maybe we're going to come back to this, is the way you do electoral registration. Our register is, and some of our law is still very old and unmodernised. And our registration system does not, for example, in England and Wales, doesn't allow you to check your under-register easily. It does in Northern Ireland. So there are a number of things that we want to do to modernise some of the underpinning technical systems as well. All that takes legislation and it takes a while and some of them takes big data systems. I mention that partly because as we move through that, our primary aim is to maintain trust in it. As soon as you start saying your data is now all online, a whole bunch of people in the UK would say, “is it vulnerable?” And the answer is, of course, it's technically vulnerable, particularly to cyber-attack, which is something we have endured and still endure significant amounts of. So we're going to have to do these systems moving in, I think, the direction that you've set, but in a way that maintains the trust in this and doesn't allow conspiracy theories, as Tom has said, to grow around what we're doing.

Rory Medcalf

I'm glad, Tom, that you've mentioned the and you both mentioned actually the Electoral Education Centre. I don't know if you still do preferential voting lessons with chocolate bars, which used to be a famous feature.

Vijay Rangarajan

You've got very healthy – it's with fruit now.

Tom Rogers

And for reasons that I'm going to have to probe into, apparently, peaches always win.

Rory Medcalf

Right. I think peaches are, not sure if I'm allowed to ask which chocolate bar used to win, but back in the day. Look, this does bring me to that question of the, I guess, the commonalities and the differences in what the two electoral commissions do. And I think, although at one level that may get a bit wonkish and technical, I think it is really important for listeners to understand that. So I'm just wondering if we can have a quick broad sweep of what the role, the responsibilities, the powers of the two electoral commissions actually are, Vijay?

Vijay Rangarajan

Well, we are fundamentally, first role is we regulate political parties themselves. So we're the register of political parties. At the moment actually we're up to over 400 political parties in the UK. And that's a really massive increase. Interesting, I'll see several major ones. There's a lot of local, smallish parties and a lot of independents. We had a record number of candidates at this general election. We regulate political party finance, and that's an absolutely crucial element that we may want to go more into. So that is their donations and their spend and the various spending caps and so on. We produce the guidance for electoral administrators, and that's the kind of self-learning process where we keep on trying to improve it. And then we do a lot of public communication, particularly about system changes. One thing that actually we also have now is obviously we have elections in 2026, for example, for the Welsh Senates and the Scottish Parliament. So there's quite specific campaigns that run in Wales and Scotland, as well as general election ones, as well as local election campaigns. There's a never-ending drumbeat of different electoral processes. I think one difference in our system is, the actual electoral administration itself is very much done by local authorities and by local returning officers. So we work obviously in lockstep with them and we regulate them and we guide them and we support them. But they are actually primarily responsible for each of the 650 local elections that then happen in a general election.

Rory Medcalf

Tom, how does that match or not with Australia?

Tom Rogers

A lot of similarities, Rory. The big difference obviously is in addition to the regulatory piece, we also conduct the election. We're centrally led and that introduces a whole range of complexity for us. Interestingly, I was in the UK for their election, Rory, and maybe I'll talk about one commonality. I visited a large number of polling places and I went to a count centre at Islington, Vijay? Islington North it was and the candidate for that who won was Jeremy Corbyn. was interesting. It was an interesting event but the one thing I've found similar Rory was in all the polling places and at the count centre was a bunch of election professionals, even those that don't do it full time, devoted to delivering democracy for the UK. And the same as we find in our polling places, you know, we have our army, democratic army of 105, 110,000 workers. And when you talk to them, they're passionate about this process.

Rory Medcalf

Volunteers who come out just for elections.

Tom Rogers

The election. And in fact, they form another purpose. Because there are so many people.

Rory Medcalf

Sorry, paid volunteers.

Tom Rogers

Paid volunteers. But when they go to the pub and someone comes up with some wacky conspiracy theory, and if I look at the last event, we had the great Dominion voting machines conspiracy in Australia where we don't use any voting machines. When they go to the pub and someone says, they're rubbing out the votes, or there's Dominion voting machines, these are the people that go, hang on, I was there. That didn't happen. And it's one of the things that Vijay and I were talking yesterday. Again, if Parliament tells us to do this, if we ever go down the path of electronic voting or online voting in particular, there's a real issue there with we won't have that army of people, that army of witnesses who will be able to do that as well. And one thing we've done over the last decade is really modernised back of house, but kept front of house as that analogue process that people trust. And I've made the statement that I am the CEO of one of the world's last great analogue events, when citizens have very digital expectations, but maintaining that trust is critical.

Vijay Rangarajan

Yeah, I'd very much agree with that. I think we will probably be trying to modernize the back of house, keep the front of house paper-based. I think there's two things that follow from that. We also count very rapidly. That's quite a strain. You've got a little army of volunteers counting.

Rory Medcalf

Well, you close the door at 10 o'clock. 

Vijay Rangarajan

Close at 10 and through on is declared and they'll stop counting within two hours and then some are counting very rapidly, and there’s always a rather amusing race as to who actually gets their first declaration in, which is fun. But there's a lot of democratic theatre about this, so participation and theatre, and making it clear that this is something slightly special, though you're actually running an election. And think having that army of volunteers, and we had, think, about 60,000 this time around, is absolutely crucial for the reasons Tom gives, but also, to make an election not a technocratic event, but a civic event and a participatory event, I think that is a really important part of it. The final bit is extreme transparency. When you're voting, when you're on a polling station, we have observers, we have international observers. Tom came around and it was great to have his expertise look in our systems. We had many other observers, obviously all the parties, all the election agents, they're all there. They can see everything. And they can do the same at the count, and they can challenge at every step of the way. So I think there's that openness and transparency and openness to challenge, which is what all these small and apparently slightly strange processes is what gives rise to the losers consent that Tom mentioned at the end of the process. You've had, you'll say, every part of the way, and look, we have counted it four times over, and there's been a bundle recount and an actual recount, and in some cases, we had very narrow majorities, you know, a very small handful of votes. But even in those cases, and this I think is great, in every single one of the constituencies, the result has been accepted, the losers consented, the winner has gone to parliament and been sworn in, and we don't have any challenges to those results, despite how tight they were.

Tom Rogers

I think the margins was two votes or something.

Vijay Rangarajan

I think it about two, there was one at 12, there were some tiny margins, as well as some gigantic ones of 20, 30,000.

Rory Medcalf

But they have confidence in getting that right down to the last vote.

Vijay Rangarajan

And that took time. I think one particular constituency in Inverness was counting and recounting and recounting right into the Saturday. Remember they started at six o'clock on a Thursday morning to go and start to open up. So there were some tired people. But that's where I think we pay tribute to many of the volunteers who do this and the election administrators because they put their heart and soul into getting this just right.

Rory Medcalf

And losers consent, the result is universally accepted.

Tom Rogers

And if you think about it, the entire democratic legitimacy of parliament and government rests on that event, that polling place, what happened and making sure that you can transparently produce solid results.

Rory Medcalf

I'm glad that the words fun and theatre have entered the conversation and civic participation because we will come back to the the troubling stuff in a moment. But one commonality I see across the two systems as well, of course, is precisely that. I mean, you don't have the democracy sausage in Britain, but I'm sure that you have some sort of parallel, I think, sense of fun and community.

Vijay Rangarajan

We do. I've got to say, the democracy sausage is strictly illegal in Britain. It's a criminal act to induce anyone to vote or vote a particular way. So I'm afraid just to warn all of your particularly Australian listeners.

Rory Medcalf

Well, the sausages are apolitical.

Vijay Rangarajan

I'm glad to hear it. But if you were to actually put up a barbecue outside our polling station. I'm afraid we will come and shut it down and you'll probably be taken away in handcuffs or maybe not, but it will be quite serious.

Rory Medcalf

 No democracy sausage, no ballot falafel?

Vijay Rangarajan

No... No, there's nothing I'm afraid. What there is, obviously we've got some rather interesting and amusing, but actually they have a point, some candidates like we have the monster raving loony party, we've got count...

Rory Medcalf

They're still around, aren't they?

Vijay Rangarajan

They are very around, they more than alive and kicking and they stood in many constituencies and appear on that final stage, know, with, in some cases, the prime minister or various senior ministers and they've got a significant number of votes. So, there's something about also people being able to express what they think in an election. They may not like any of the candidates, they may have a very low opinion or a high opinion, whatever, of the candidates and the parties and so on, but they participate and that, think, is also important.

Rory Medcalf

Extreme transparency was another term that I've heard and that would appear to be another very clear commonality across the two commissions. And then finally, that obvious point, but the point that needs to be emphasised of absolute independence. So I wonder if either of you could comment or both of you could comment on the independence question.

Tom Rogers

Look, it's critical and I know sometimes we can take it for granted, Rory. You mentioned the democracy sausage thing. Sometimes we think that elections in Australia are all about the democracy sausage and puppies and oxygen and flowers and it's all lovely but…

Rory Medcalf

I should just pay respect here to the Democracy Sausage podcast another ANU podcast which actually has that name. Go ahead.

Tom Rogers

But it's great to see you know community members participating in that process but for me independence means occasionally providing advice that is uncomfortable for government opposition for candidates adhering to the rules regardless of who you are regulating, and we regulate many aspects. We've just finished as you know the redistribution of boundaries for three of our states, we've grown a seat, we've killed two seats. Now we're an important part of that process. So being independent is critical and possibly even as important is the perception of independence. So it's not just good enough to be independent, you've got to be independent and be perceived as independent. And I think that's what partially feeds into our trust rating, that bit about nine out of 10 Australians trusting us, because we are independent. And it's a very important part of what we do. I know it's the same in the UK, but Vijay, might have a point on that?

Vijay Rangarajan

Yeah, it's very similar, I think, particularly because we are the regulator of the political parties. You've got to be really, be very clear on your legal framework and the way you're treating them. It doesn't mean you're regulating them in a sort of punitive sense. What we're trying to support is a very broad range, as I said, of over 400 political parties, independent candidates, to participate in the process. And they need much more support than anything else, because many independent candidates this time around, many were absolutely brand new. We're having to explain what can be a really complicated arcane system of, political party finance to them, explain all of these rules. But I think our role fundamentally is about making sure that the overall debate works and we can delegitimize, as far as we can, bad behaviours which can creep in and we can say, and collectively, the parties can say “we don't want to do politics like this” and that's an evolving conversation.

Tom Rogers

I think something for electoral administrators to remember globally is that you can't actually have an election without candidates and party workers. So occasionally, you know, it can creep in that people think it's inconvenient because they're doing the wrong thing or they are a critical part of the process. They need to be treated with respect and encouraged to participate. And that's why that independence and fair regulation of the process is so important.

Rory Medcalf

So all of this exercise of democratic rights is occurring in a contested international environment at the moment, a contested geopolitical environment. So I do want to come back to, I guess, one of the problem issues that we haven't addressed directly yet, and that's the question of foreign interference. Foreign interference, potentially in democracies by authoritarian powers, but even the possibility of nominally democratic countries behaving that way. Vijay, I'd be very interested to understand how the question of foreign interference has been approached in the UK and to what extent is that a challenge for your electoral commission? What's the challenge and what's the response?

Vijay Rangarajan

So going into our election, we were concerned about this and it was partly because we've seen what's happened in other parts of the world. And we, for example, were really interested in the experiences of many of the European nations in the European parliamentary election in June of this year. And there have been clear attempts at foreign interference, particularly in some of Eastern European states, but more broadly.

Rory Medcalf

And I'm assuming we're talking about Russia here, but go ahead.

Vijay Rangarajan

We are definitely talking about Russian interference. We, i.e. the UK Electoral Commission, were subject to a cyber attack by China. We attributed this really clearly, which penetrated one of our servers. And potentially, we don't think much was taken, but potentially had access to the actual role. So, you know, China, Russia, we've had other countries as well, I think, who have tried to influence parts of the system or gain access to it. And so what we've been doing is trying to strengthen our systems against this. There's a third vector, I think, of influence and attack, which is complex, which is through finance. So who is donating to whom and are they serving their own purposes and not the purposes of, of our own voters and citizens in their political donations. And we don't allow donations from foreign entities. You've got to be on the British electoral register to donate as a person or be a company in Britain. But we want to tighten up those rules as much as possible, again, to build the trust in the system. The other part of, I think, interference is some of the information operations. So we were definitely concerned that we would see more coordinated information operations to try to say, discredit the election. And again, we've seen international examples of that or to discredit particular candidates. I have to say the good news is we didn't see very much of any of that in our election and we were looking very closely. We have a similar structure, perhaps a little bit less formed than the structure you have here that Tom's already mentioned, the Electoral Integrity Assurance Board. But a very similar group in the UK was looking at, “are we confident in the systems of our election?” I do think we've got more work to do. And I say I put this particularly on cyber defences, but also tightening up some of the political finance laws, thinking about how information is spread. And the other big shift is I think in general, we've all had our focus on electoral events. So thinking election by election, are people influencing at that moment? I think that paradigm is shifting. The influence happens between elections and we're going to have to do a lot more continuous work between elections on our systems than just focusing on the electoral, election time because by that stage a lot could have happened and we haven't necessarily been in position to defend against that. So there's quite a lot of work in entire area. I'm confident we can defend against these threats and I don't think they have posed in any way a threat to the integrity of any of our elections. But that's what we've to be vigilant for. And this is going to be one of the themes of our kind of next few years work. We are going to augment the work we're working with international partners and obviously particularly the AEC on how do we actually combat some of these issues.

Rory Medcalf

And Tom, foreign interference has obviously become a much more studied and understood problem in Australia over the past decade. Clearly, there are some instruments in place to try to deal with that, but what's your sense on how that connects with our electoral integrity?

Tom Rogers

I think we're well established, Rory. I think we worked with government, encouraged government to assist us back before the 2019 election and the Electoral Integrity Assurance Task Force is now a really important part of electoral integrity in Australia and it's a collation, as you know, of intelligence and security partners. There's an air gap between that task force and me, which is very important, but it totally scans the environment for us and is in operation even between elections. So the board meets on a very regular basis. The task force stands up at electoral events. It's given me great assurance. As you might know, it produces a statement at the end of each election about what they've seen and whether they've witnessed sufficient influence that might influence the outcome, I should say. That's never been the case, but we're watching it closely. When I was in the UK, just as Vijay went and spoke to our task force yesterday, we had a great meeting with your partner agencies that briefed us on what they saw. So we're learning from each other and from other democracies. And Rory, the Canberra series was a critical part of that, as you know. But it's changed. We've got to watch it. The only difficulty is sometimes when people start talking about, know, foreign interference and foreign influence, sometimes it's just domestic interference in elections that we have to worry about as well because there are multiple vectors that can influence people's view of the electoral process. It's a little what we've seen overseas in some other elections as well. we're looking at the whole thing, we're well set up, but we've got to keep learning from each other because it will be a focus over the next few years.

Rory Medcalf

Look, we are almost at time, but there is, apart from the forthcoming Australian federal election, there is another election of greater global magnitude coming up very, very soon in November and that's of course in the United States. So just wondering if there's a parting observation from each of you on what you're watching for and what would I guess concern your attention when you're watching what occurs in the United States in November and beyond, Vijay?

Vijay Rangarajan

our systems are really very different to the US. I'm always struck by that every time I've been there. I mean, the sheer amount of money in their system is so unlike ours and yours. So in a sense, there's something to watch and learn for there, but there's not direct applicable lessons, I think. Clearly, losers consent, a theme we've been coming back to, is really important. And I that's going to be tested, but hopefully that will work in the US. The second is going to be, just the sheer number of volunteers and people getting involved. I mean, it still is a gigantic and fantastic democratic event. A lot of people are going to be taking part in it.

Rory Medcalf

And people are, a huge, a lot of people give their time and their service.

Vijay Rangarajan

Absolutely. As we saw the last time, individual electoral administrators and those judging results and stuff have to take tough decisions and then stand up and justify those. I'm sure that will continue. And that's one of the reasons why getting the right people into these roles and the independence, the integrity of electoral officials is absolutely fundamental. I think one thing I'm really watching in the US election is the degree of, again, mis- and disinformation and polarisation. They're probably a step ahead of us on that. And I think some of the techniques that the US will be using to try to bring that together –

Rory Medcalf

Sorry, can I interrupt, ahead of us, as in being subject to it or in responding?

Vijay Rangarajan

I think they're more polarised, certainly. And some of the misinformation that we've seen about the US election has been the sort of thing that we would jump in and try and correct very, very quickly. So how they cope with that think is going to be quite a lesson for us and we can see some of the threats there.

Tom Rogers

Without taking up too much time Rory, I'd agree with everything that Vijay said and also what you said. I have been to the US and I've seen an election early on. They are, the electoral administrators, the same as our electoral administrators. They are devoted to the task. It's a very complex task. I think that bit about reputation management, losers consent is so critical. And in fact, upon reflection, we changed part of our reputation management system, looking at what has occurred overseas, not just in the US, and put operational excellence at the heart of it. And we had all these principles before, which were great, but the one thing we were missing is the fact that you need to have a reputation to manage before you can start managing your reputation. I think we'll be looking at their operational excellence. They've got to get that right, which I know they're very, very good and very devoted to the task. We will be saying something towards the end of the year or early next year about AI at election time after we've seen what occurs in the US because that will be influential. So we're watching very closely and good luck to them.

Rory Medcalf

Tom, this is your last public engagement with the National Security College as Australian Electoral Commissioner. So I'm going to give you the last word.

Tom Rogers

All I'd say, Rory, is that elections and what we do is a critical part of national security which you've recognised early on and it is so important to who we are as a nation. We need to take it seriously; we need to invest in it and I'm very grateful for the way that all Australians treat the electoral system as theirs. It's not just owned by the AEC; we need to maintain that so that people understand this is their election and it's so important.

Rory Medcalf

Tom Rogers, Vijay Rangarajan, thank you very much for joining us on the National Security Podcast and again I just commend you both on the work that you do for the security of our elections but really for the integrity of the democratic system so thank you very much.

Tom Rogers and Vijay Rangarajan

Thank you very much.

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