Questions raised about Christian Lobby Campaign.
More than a million emails from 7,634 Australians will be sent today to government MPs and Senators calling for a free vote on marriage equality.
After Senator David Leyonhjelm last week flagged debate on his Freedom to Marry Bill, advocates for and against the reform launched unprecedented email campaigns.
Australian Marriage Equality says 1,022,956 emails have been sent though its special free vote webform as at midday today, but to alleviate the burden on MPs’ offices it is packaging the emails in special electronic files that will be sent to MPs offices all at once.
“The large number of Australians who have sent emails to their federal government members reflects strong majority support for a marriage equality free vote.”
“It’s time for the Liberal and National parties to live up to their principle of individual freedom by allowing their parliamentary members the freedom to vote for marriage equality.”
“We understand receiving so many individual emails is a problem for members and their staff so we decided to pack them into PDF files and send them all at once.”
“I hope members appreciate our courtesy and repay it by acknowledging this strong swell of community support for a free vote.”
7,634 individual Australians have sent pro-free vote emails through the AME website to all 134 Liberal and National members (total, 1,022,956). Other pro-marriage equality organisations including Get Up! have also been involved in large-scale email campaigns.
Mr Croome questioned the total number of emails sent by the Australian Christian Lobby saying its system leaves open the possibility of manipulation.
“Unlike our webform, the ACL’s doesn’t have an inbuilt validation device, opening up the possibility for its email count to be corrupted by computer-generated manipulation.”
“We have been told by observers in Parliament House that the ACL’s emails arrive like clockwork, without any peaks or troughs, suggesting at least some are being automatically generated.”
For more information contact Rodney Croome on 0409 010 668.
Author: Rodney Croome
Publication: AME Media Release
Date: 23 March 2015