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Palmer flags court challenge over poll

Clive Palmer has accused the Australian Electoral Commission of influencing the election result, and has flagged a possible High Court challenge.

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Clive Palmer. (AAP)

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Source: AAP


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Clive Palmer has accused the Australian Electoral Commission of influencing the election result, and has flagged a possible High Court challenge.

Mr Palmer said the AEC was being prejudicial against his party, and other smaller parties.

"This is part of the whole story in Australia, where everyone assumes that this election is going to be fought between the two parties," the Palmer United Party leader said.

"All the media, all the debate, everything is only about two different alternatives."

Mr Palmer says the AEC is "openly predicting" the results of the election, and possibly influencing the election results in Western Australia and in South Australia, where booths are open after east coast venues have closed.

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He said the AEC would be providing booths with an envelope in which two parties' names would be.

"These parties have been predetermined by an officer of the AEC and will be based on the 2010 election results," he said in the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax, where he is running.

"These results will be shown as the two party result and will be the basis for preference counting."

He said the parties would be flashed on a screen at the AEC.

"Neither of these parties may have finished first or second in the ballet," he said.

"For sure our party is not going to be in the secret envelope.

"As a result of this, as voters go to the polls in Western Australia, they may assume a particular result and they may have the media calling the election based on AEC data and information which is wrong and incorrect.

"We don't think the AEC should be in that game."

Mr Palmer said the AEC should only be providing information "that is accurate, and correct".

"If the agency continues to do this ... we will be challenging the AEC and the result of the election outcome in Western Australia in the High Court after the election, to seek that it be void," he told reporters.

Katter's Australian Party leader Bob Katter told the Seven Network he agreed the electoral system was unfair for smaller parties like his.

He said the AEC had done nothing to counter the LNP lie that a vote for the Katter party was a vote for Labor.

"The AEC did nothing about it - nothing whatsoever," Mr Katter told Seven.

"I can tell you people in my electorate actually believed it."


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