Same-sex marriage postal vote barcode included ‘offensive’ word

Gas.

For the past few weeks, Australians have been having their say as to whether they support same-sex marriage or not. Unlike Ireland, the lads down under are not having a referendum but a postal vote. The vote is not legally binding, but if a 'yes' vote dominates, it is likely that the Australian government will have an in parliament vote themselves to decide whether or not to introduce marriage equality. The postal vote has been going on for a while now. Its results are compiled anonymously using a barcode that is unique to each individual person. However, one Australian recently received a barcode on their postal vote that they were pretty surprised by. Right there in the middle of the code was the word 'bumsex.' Standard. https://twitter.com/Stormchaser182/status/910485371577761793 Naturally, the image went viral once it was posted. And understandably, people freaked out. Was the 'bumsex' code a secret message from the Australian government? Was it a sign of things to come? Did it mean that the so-called gay agenda was on its way to destroy everyone's traditional hetero values, etc? Apparently, it was none of things and just an honest mistake. The Australian Bureau of Statistics was forced to issue an apology over the barcode, which they say could have been found "offensive" by some people. According to Deputy Statistician Jonathan Palmer, the barcodes were generated using a random algorithm, so there was no way the bureau could have known what letters and numbers would appear on the postal votes.

"The codes were issued using an algorithm generating more than two quintillion combinations (2,000,000,000,000,000,000) of letters and numbers in order to generate highly secure barcodes."

That's a lot of combinations for 'bumsex' to end up being one of them. Palmer also said that if anyone wanted a new postal vote, they just had to contact the bureau. The results of the vote are expected to be released on November 15. Over 16,000,000 barcodes have been issued since the beginning of this month.