Liberal senator Hollie Hughes fact-checked by the AEC for a comment that's a "little misleading"

The comments from Ms Hughes came during an interview on the ABC.

It's usually our role to fact-check, but the Australian Electoral Commission is - in this case - doing it for us.

On the ABC's Afternoon Briefing, Liberal senator Hollie Hughes cited Labor's primary vote of around 32%, saying "68% of people voted for somebody else."

On Twitter, where the AEC has been active throughout the past year, their official account replied to a tweet from 10 News First journalist Hugh Riminton.

"Understand the Senator is making a political point here but this is a little misleading," they said.

"First of all, the number being cited is first preferences only. Australia has preferential voting. Second, we don't have one national vote, we have 151 separate House elections."

Early results gave the Coalition (combining the Liberals, Nationals, LNP & the CLP) around 35-36% of the primary vote, with The Greens at approximately 12%, independents at 6%, One Nation at just over 5% & the United Australia Party around 4.5%.

Even before the election campaign began, the AEC was active on Twitter correcting misinformation & disinformation.

While discussing preferential voting, the AEC's Evan Ekin-Smyth told Leonardo Puglisi that people "get it wrong" and "this idea that you can waste your vote by not really voting for the right person, and not really understanding how preferences flow."

Check out the latest impartial coverage of the 2022 Federal Election here.

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