Liberal Democratic Party leader David Leyonhjelm rejects the Sex Party's claim his party deliberately botched the lodging of a preference form. Credit:James Alcock Because of this mistake, the Sex Party lost its LDP preferences and in doing so missed its best chance of being elected to parliament, Ms Patten says. ABC election analyst Antony Green confirmed that the Sex Party had a decent chance of winning a Victorian Senate seat if preference deals went its way. In a deal struck between the two parties, the Sex Party agreed to give its preferences to the LDP in NSW and the LDP would return the favour in Victoria. Both parties have civil libertarian values, including their supporting voluntary euthanasia and legalising marijuana.

The Sex Party had spent most of its roughly $200,000 in election fund-raising in its campaign to win the Senate seat in its "natural home" of Victoria, Ms Patten said. Asked what the Liberal Democrats had to gain by deliberately messing with its own fax machine (given the mistake cost the LDP votes as well), Ms Patten said the success of the Sex Party in Victoria would affect the LDP's chances in future elections. ''The LDP were very concerned that we would get elected in Victoria, and that that would really harm their chances,'' Ms Patten said. ''Because if one civil liberties party got up then that would really reduce the chances of another . . . getting up.'' Mr Leyonhjelm told Fairfax Media that Ms Patten was ''delusional'', her accusations ''totally offensive'', and it was an honest mistake that led to the LDP getting the fax number wrong and being left out of the above-the-line box in Victoria.

''We don't understand why Fiona [Patten] can't accept that this was human error," Mr Leyonhjelm said. ''We don't understand why she has to be so personally obnoxious about it. ''I thought they were our allies,'' he added, saying that the parties had exchanged preferences in 2010, which was the first time the Sex Party contested a federal election. Rather than some malevolent ''conspiracy'', it was the electoral commission's stubborn insistence on outdated technology that led to the LDP's problems, Mr Leyonhjelm said. ''Fax is an old technology, LDP is a small party,'' Mr Leyonhjelm said. ''We don't have flash modern faxes, in fact we don't have a fax, the fax machine belongs to my company and it gets used very infrequently.'' Mr Leyonhjelm said he had apologised to Ms Patten on the afternoon of the election, but she had ''immediately roped in lawyers'' and had persisted with this ''ridiculous conspiracy theory''.

The fight between the LDP and the Sex Party was evidence of ''how crook the system is'', argues the election analyst Mr Green. ''I think it's a bit tedious when people who are engaged in an outright attempt to game the system to complain when things don't go their way,'' Mr Green said. The polling expert believes the Sex Party will never get elected to Parliament now because the major parties would change the Senate voting system, which has led to the likely election of parties with minuscule votes (such as the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party). It was one thing to elect parties on small votes – that's how a system of preferential voting works – but quite another to elect a party that got fewer votes than a dozen other minor parties, Mr Green said. ''The Labor Party and Liberals will sort it out . . . They just can't allow a system to work this way,'' he said.