INCOMPETENCE or something worse? That’s the question facing the South Australian Electoral Commission, who may be facing court over at least two discoveries of missing votes from the recent state election.
“The electoral commission ran a very dodgy election, I lodged complaints and have put them on notice of court challenge for damages,” candidate Mark Aldridge, who ran as an independent under his own name, posted on his social media page.
Aldridge has lodged complaints from previous elections, alleging missing postal ballots, questionable practices, and blatant manipulation by Labor operatives.
“Though I lost the challenge officially, I effectively won in spirit, growing more widely recognized for my advocacy in protecting democratic integrity. This earned me respect from prominent figures and legal organizations committed to electoral fairness.”
According to One Nation, the Commission found 642 votes they didn’t know they’d lost and then decided only 81 of them were worth counting. One Nation Upper House member Carlos Quaremba called for a parliamentary inquiry.
“Three sealed boxes of absent ballots were sitting somewhere, unopened, since the March 21 state election – votes cast by real people at the Port Pirie Early Voting Centre and polling places in the electorate of Stuart, who were enrolled elsewhere and doing the normal thing of voting while away from home,” a One Nation spokesman said.
“Those boxes were supposed to be sent to the Absent Exchange in Adelaide, sorted by electorate, and forwarded to the correct returning officer for counting. They never were. Nobody noticed. Not on election night. Not during the count. Not during the recount. Not when writs were returned.”
One Nation says 81 of those votes belonged to Chantelle Thomas, the new One Nation Member for Narungga, who had been declared the winner by 58 votes.
“So the maths suddenly mattered. ECSA ordered a further count on Friday. Scrutineers attended. The count went ahead. Chantelle increased her margin to 74. Good result. Seat confirmed.”
Where it gets even more interesting is that the other 561 votes were not to be counted.
The ECSA says the margins in those other seats are too large for the votes to change the outcome, which is probably true in a narrow mathematical sense, but entirely beside the point.
The question is not whether those 561 votes change who won, it is how 642 votes went missing in the first place, how the absent vote reconciliation system failed to flag it, how nobody at the absent exchange noticed they had received boxes from 46 electorates instead of 47, and whether the three boxes that were found are the only three boxes that exist.
Acting Commissioner Leah McLay was asked about the cause. Her exact words were: “We have not investigated what the cause of the error was.”
“That is the Electoral Commission of South Australia, almost a month after the election, telling the public it has not looked into how hundreds of ballots sat uncounted in sealed boxes. And in the same breath, assuring everyone that ‘no other irregularities have been identified’,” Mr Quaremba said.
The Acting Premier Kyam Maher says the government is “finalising terms of reference” for an independent review.
“Where is Electoral Commissioner Mick Sherry in all this? He has been in the role since 2017. His deputy has been fronting the cameras. He has said nothing publicly that has been reported,” Mr Quaremba said.
“This is not about who won Narungga. Chantelle Thomas won Narungga twice. The question is how much faith anyone should have in the rest of the count when the organisation running it lost 642 ballots, found them by accident, counted the ones that mattered politically, left the rest in a drawer, and has not bothered to work out how any of it happened.”
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