Nationwide, the AEC ran a smooth federal election, except for one NSW booth where a worker took ballots home. Photo: Michelle Kroll.
When it’s all said and done, the Australian Electoral Commission ran a well-managed and thorough federal election – with one glaring exception.
On election night (3 May), almost 2000 ballots went missing from a Sydney polling booth and ended up in an employee’s home, with the worker in question not showing much concern about it when the security breach was exposed.
With more than 18 million Australians registered to vote (98.2 per cent of eligible voters), the AEC’s job has been gargantuan and 1700-plus missing ballots from one booth is perhaps a small hiccup in an otherwise smooth operation.
Except it’s not that small an error to have taken place at all.
The polling booth was Hurtsville in the electorate of Barton and that is where a temporary AEC worker picked up a secure container containing the ballots and took it home.
Other AEC officials only noticed the missing container days later when a routine recount of the votes began.
The incident was leaked and now the media is all over it.
In a statement, the AEC expressed its distress over the matter but assured the nation that the breach did not impact the vote.
“On polling night, all votes were counted in the Hurstville polling place (Division of Barton) in the presence of candidate-appointed scrutineers with all results reported onto the AEC’s tally room in real time,” it said.
“As per normal practice in all 7000 polling places, the ballot papers were securely packaged in the presence of scrutineers with an AEC transport officer collecting seven ballot paper transport containers (five Senate and two House of Representatives) from the officer in charge of the polling place for delivery to a materials return hub and then on to our Out-posted Centre (counting centre) to await further processing.
“In the days following polling night, the AEC undertakes fresh scrutiny (the mandatory second count of all House of Representatives ballot papers), which begins on the Tuesday.
“When AEC staff got to the point of conducting fresh scrutiny for the Hurstville polling place, they were initially unable to proceed.”
The AEC’s tracking processes for ballot paper transport containers identified that one of the two House of Representatives containers for the Hurstville polling place was not returned to the central counting centre as it should have been.
The other six transport containers for the polling place were accounted for.
“The AEC exhausted numerous avenues of inquiry, ascertaining that the authorised transport officer inadvertently maintained possession of the single missing container,” the AEC said.
“It was recovered from the transport officer fully intact, with all uniquely coded security seals unbroken, and without any damage.
“All ballot papers were still in the recovered ballot paper transport container and were promptly returned to the counting centre, where they have undergone fresh scrutiny.
“The fresh scrutiny count matched the initial count and the election in the Division of Barton was unaffected by this incident.”
But in a telling few lines from the explanatory statement, it doesn’t appear that the AEC worker who took the ballots home was overly concerned about what had happened or the need to return the container intact.
“While respecting the privacy of the individual concerned, the AEC did experience a number of challenges in communicating with this person as we explored all possible avenues of inquiry,” the statement said.
“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.
“This does not appear to be a deliberate act.”
Yet the mea culpa from the Commission outlines the seriousness of what went down.
“This shouldn’t have occurred, and the AEC is deeply concerned that on this single occasion our process did not prevent the issue on polling night when ballot papers were initially returned,” it said.
“However, the further layers of ballot paper tracking processes in place for many elections did ultimately identify the issue and help rectify the situation.
“Nonetheless, work is already underway to further investigate this incident to understand what, if any, elements of the return of materials process need to be changed for future elections.”
Australia’s elections are manual and require the authorised transport of ballot papers by AEC staff.
This includes the use of 90,000 ballot paper transport containers and about 100,000 staff employed on election day for around 7,000 different voting venues.
Select AEC staff are required and authorised to take possession of, and transport, ballot papers – all of which are tracked.
There are documented processes, training and planning.
“In the single instance outlined above, out of thousands all around Australia, the return of these materials didn’t occur in accordance with these processes,” the AEC said.
“The AEC’s manual processes inherently rely on people and occasionally people make mistakes or don’t exercise the best judgment, particularly when under pressure.”
The outcome of the investigation into this breach will, hopefully, be made public.
