When prep teacher Kerry Ford returned to her Brunswick home from a holiday on Monday, what she found behind her carport made her angry and upset.
Seventeen addressed and unopened same-sex marriage postal vote envelopes had been dumped in front of her children's cubby house.
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By the numbers: 7 in 10 to vote YES
Latest Ipsos/Fairfax poll show 70 per cent support same-sex marriage are among those 'certain' to vote, however only 65 per cent of the public are 'certain' they will particpate in the upcoming postal vote.
The letters were addressed to houses in the surrounding streets.
"I think it happened last week, some of them have been eaten by snails," she said. "Our postal votes have also been stolen."
Ms Ford is in a same-sex relationship and has two young children.
"I've been trying to keep my head down and not listen to the hurtful things," she said. "I am in a really lovely, non-homophobic bubble in Brunswick.
"But this postal survey drags our family life into a very public domain for everyone to comment on and it's tiring and upsetting. It's constant harassment of my ordinary life."
Ms Ford does not know how the postal votes reached her backyard but believed they were the result of someone raiding local letter boxes.
"You see mail strewn around in Brunswick so it is possible it is part of some naughtiness," she said. "We're in a block of flats so I'd be surprised if the postman could have put them behind the carport outside the cubby house."
She contacted the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which is running the postal survey, and despite the temptation to "just vote yes times 17" she will follow their instructions and hand the voting papers to police.
Ms Ford said this incident showed the potential for corruption of the survey process that could undermine the integrity of the result, to be announced on November 15.
"The upsetting thing is not so much how it happened but that it shows how completely inefficient the process is," she said. "It's not a true representation of people's views if people may or may not vote or may not follow up their voting paper."
In August the ABS fronted an inquiry about the non-binding, non-compulsory poll and conceded that the postal vote process and fraud prevention would rely on individuals reporting missing survey forms.
The governmental statistical agency also acknowledged it could not prevent people filling out other people's forms.
Victorians should receive their postal vote envelopes by September 25. Those whose postal vote is missing or has not arrived can request a replacement form from the ABS between September 25 and by 6pm, October 20.
It is believed that 10 million voting papers have already been sent out, of the 16 million that will reach Australians who are eligible and registered to vote.
Votes must be returned by no later than October 27.