The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is looking into how a container of ballot papers briefly went missing during the counting process after election night in Sydney.
More than 1,800 votes were found at an AEC staff member’s home in the Labor-held seat of Barton, in south Sydney.
The AEC said the votes were tracked down quickly and weren’t tampered with.
It said the incident doesn’t appear to have been deliberate and hasn’t affected the count in the race.
Counting
These are the steps involved in counting votes at a federal election:
- Voters cast their ballot at a polling centre.
- AEC staff count the ballots at the centre, overseen by scrutineers (people appointed by candidates to keep an eye on the count).
- The votes are packaged into containers and sent to an external counting centre to undergo a second count three days later.
Missing container
Staff tried to start the second count for the seat of Barton at a Sydney counting centre on Tuesday 6 May.
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However, they found a container of 1,866 lower house votes was missing from the Hurstville polling place.
The AEC said one of the transport officers responsible for moving all the containers had failed to drop off all of the ballots.
The AEC tracked down the container at the official’s home.
It was found to be “fully intact, with all the uniquely coded security seals unbroken”.
The AEC concluded, based on its initial review, that it was an accident.
“We are of the view, with evidence available to us at this time, that the transport officer inadvertently overlooked the return of the transport container and was indifferent to the implications and our serious concerns,” it said in a statement.
Impact
The AEC said there was no impact on the overall count in the seat of Barton.
Labor’s Ash Ambihaipahar won the safe seat with 66% of the two-party preferred vote against her Liberal rival.
The AEC described the temporarily missing container as a “near miss,” and said it’s reviewing transport practices of ballots to avoid future incidents.
TDA understands there could be further consequences for the worker involved.
