Postal vote fraud: Aged-care residents' ballot papers filled out by worker

Dianne Deveigne, 51, formerly of Frost Street, was sentenced in Orange Local Court after pleading guilty to filling out formal votes ahead of the September 2017 local government election.

Deveigne worked as an activities officer at the facility and had been asked to arrange the voting for the residents for the election, but said she didn’t understand what was required and made the wrong decision.

She applied for and was sent 56 ballot papers: 28 ballots for the mayor’s election and 28 for the councillors’, and an envelope for each resident.

However, instead of giving the forms and envelopes to the residents she marked 35 of them as formal votes and left the remainder blank.

She sent them back to the Australian Electoral Commission and signed off as a witness.

The offences were detected by a facility nurse after the AEC returned the forms for the residents to sign their declarations and the residents were given their chance to vote.

Solicitor Meaghan Denholm said Deveigne was under a lot of stress in both her work and personal lives and ticked the boxes at random.

“The facts show that the offending was not the intention to influence the election in any way,” she said.

Magistrate David Day accepted the offences were reckless, not malicious, but said they required a conviction.

“It’s an important part of democracy that people who are entitled to vote, [do] vote,” Mr Day said.

“The victim of this is not the residents who ended up not losing their right to vote but it’s an attack on the integrity of the [democratic electoral] process.”

In her defence, Deveigne said she had worked in her role solo for six months leading up to the offence and was time poor, under pressure and stress at work and in her personal life, and did not understand what was required or that what she did was an offence.

Mr Day asked why Deveigne didn’t ask a manager for help. Under oath she said, “they just said I was on my own, I had to do it myself … ​I wasn’t trying to take away people’s rights, I was just trying to get over the line and my judgement was wrong.”

Deveigne was fined a total of $3850, or $110 for each charge, which Mr Day said was extreme leniency.

“Had the facts been different I would be imposing a substantial monetary penalty,” Mr Day said.

Deveigne resigned from the facility after the offences were uncovered.