No voters have launched an online petition calling for a recount of the Australian Marriage Postal Survey.

The petition at change.org claims that the results provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics are “unreliable and do not represent the true numbers reflected by the Australian people.”

The petition says that corruption is widespread throughout government departments and an independent body is needed to double check the results that showed an overwhelming number of Australians supported marriage equality.

The petition has been signed by over 2,000 people and is being promoted by users of the Coalition for Marriage’s Freedom Team app.

The official ‘No’ campaign has however admitted defeat. On Wednesday the group’s spokesman Lyle Shelton said they accepted and respected the outcome of the survey.

“While we are naturally disappointed in today’s result, we accept and respect the decision of the Australian people,” Shelton said.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has revealed that 36,686 survey forms were deemed invalid because they were not filled out correctly.

These included forms where both ‘Yes and “No’ box were ticked, neither box was ticked, or the questions had been changed, which made the subsequent response unclear.

Of the 12.7 million forms returned almost 17,000 had no response, with neither ‘yes’ or ‘no’ being selected on the form.

OIP Staff