Sovereign citizens, conspiracy theorists and keyboard warriors ‘want to stir the pot’ with federal election coming, says AEC
“Sovereign citizens, conspiracy theorists and keyboard warriors” are among the domestic threats being monitored ahead of the upcoming federal election, the electoral authority has warned.
The Australian Electoral Commission, deep into its preparations for the yet-to-be announced polling day, said the mis- and disinformation threats to the 2025 federal election were coming from within the country, rather than from overseas actors.
“We’re doing this to ourselves … which is one of the sort of sad things about how this thing’s playing out,” the AEC’s acting electoral commissioner, Jeff Pope, told a media briefing in Canberra on Friday.
“We’re seeing sovereign citizens and conspiracy theorists and keyboard warriors, who don’t want to reveal their identity. They do want to stir the pot and cause problems.”
The federal government’s Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce earlier this month released its election security overview, revealing foreign interference, cybersecurity, protest and terrorism activity, as well as locally produced mis- and disinformation, as potential threats for the vote.
The commission launched a new voter information campaign on Friday, which included an advertising campaign to help voters spot misleading information, a disinformation register and resources to identify misinformation tactics such as deepfakes and AI-generated content.
“It’s always been the voter’s role … right from the first election, to actually navigate through the information environment,” Pope said.
“It would have started off in the town square with a little bit of exaggeration and a little bit of hyperbole and a stretch of the truth, and now we’re in a very different environment. But the voter’s role hasn’t changed, and we want to support them as best we can to navigate through that.”
The election taskforce, which includes members of the AEC, federal police, and security agencies, will meet at least daily once the election is called.
A rise in recent violent or antisocial incidents in Sydney and Melbourne relating to overseas conflicts, including the war in Gaza, was being discussed and monitored by the taskforce as it prepared the logistics for delivering more than 7,000 polling places around the country.
Pope said there had not been any “demonstrable changes” to polling place security as a result of recent societal tensions but said conversations about the situation were ongoing.
“For me, it will be an incredibly sad day for Australia if we have to put some form of security at the front of a polling place. I hope that we never see that, and we’re doing everything possible with the security agencies to ensure that that is not required,” he said.
On Thursday, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation said the current threat level – probable – meant there was a greater than 50% chance of a domestic terrorist attack or attack planning in the next 12 months, but that it did not believe the threat level should be raised further at this point.
The threat level was raised from “possible” to “probable” in August 2024, with Asio advising there had been an “increase in extremism, fuelled by conspiracy theories and anti-authority ideologies”.
The agency’s director-general, Mike Burgess, warned in October 2023 that inflamed language about the conflict in the Middle East could inflame tensions in Australia.
