Antony Green thrusts support behind group voting end

Mr Green called for group voting tickets to be dumped and noted Victoria was the only Australian jurisdiction still using the system, which allows parties to distribute upper-house preferences when people vote above the line.

"Voters have trouble finding the candidates they know amongst the flotsam and jetsam that washes up on the ballot paper for the purposes of manipulating preferences," he told the committee.

"If you abolish group voting tickets, you will shrink the size of the ballot paper, have fewer parties nominating and (that will) result in more candidates being elected in proportion to their votes."

Manipulation of the voting system was laid bare before last year's state election after so-called preference whisperer Glenn Druery was covertly recorded boasting about his method.

In the footage, Mr Druery asked representatives from the Angry Victorians Party to pay $55,000 for each candidate he managed to get elected through his backroom dealings.

Mr Green recommended Victoria adopt a simple "one above the line" voting system.

Group voting tickets allow Labor and the Greens, who compete for a seat in most of the eight upper house regions, to talk to other parties in the hopes of attracting preferences, Mr Green said.

As it stands, the election analyst estimated at least one and sometimes two members are elected to each region because of political deals.

Animal Justice MP Georgie Purcell was elected to the Northern Victoria region last year after receiving 1.53 per cent of the primary vote.

Appearing before the inquiry on Thursday, outgoing Labor state secretary Chris Ford indicated the party's in-principle support for abolishing group voting tickets.

The Greens and Liberals have also backed scrapping the system, which was used in the Australian Senate from the 1984 federal election until the 2016 federal election.

NSW, South Australia and Western Australia have all done away with group voting tickets over the past two decades.

Outside of upper house voting reform, Mr Green said the Victorian Electoral Commission is suffering from an outdated election management system.

He argued too many pre-poll votes are counted at a central activity centre and suggested more counting centres are required.

Cryptographer and election security expert Vanessa Teague warned against Victoria adopting online voting after NSW's iVote system failed during council elections in 2021.

The issue led to the Supreme Court overturning the results of three local government elections but Prof Teague suggested the scale of voter disenfranchisement went well beyond that.

"I don't think the magnitude of that individual failure has been fully communicated in the media," the Thinking Cybersecurity chief executive said.

"It was not 50 to 100 people disenfranchised that messed up three councils.

"It was thousands and thousands of people disenfranchised - probably upwards of 10,000 people disenfranchised - leaving probably 30 or 40 local council results in doubt."

The committee is reviewing the 2022 Victorian state election and will report by May 2024.