Overworked, inexperienced, hungry. Election day as a vote-counter and scrutineer can be tough, and mistakes — as the Western Australian Senate debacle proves — can happen. Clive Palmer has been quick to point the finger at the Electoral Commission, but it seems we should be looking to Canberra.
The cost of the 2013 election hasn’t been confirmed but it’s believed to be around $113 million, only marginally up from the $108 million spent in 2010. While electoral experts say we have one of the best systems in the world, those on the ground say election day was a gruelling day of chaos for employees. Employees, experts and scrutineers all say more money needs to be spent on more training for more staff to stop standards slipping.
An experienced AEC casual employee told Crikey that this year’s election was the “most disorganised” the employee had ever been involved in, with staff for their polling booth not confirmed until the Thursday before the election. AEC spokesperson Phil Diak told Crikey he had no comment on the claim, except that “the AEC reviews every election that it conducts and there is also a comprehensive review of each federal election by the joint standing committee on electoral matters”.
As an officer in charge (or OIC) of a polling booth, our insider worked from 5.30am on Saturday until 1.30am on Sunday. The staff that counted votes after 6pm were the same that had been staffing polling stations all day. “We didn’t get a break for dinner, they didn’t even order pizza in at all,” the insider said.
In fact, the count on Saturday night doesn’t impact the final result — ballot papers are recounted and preference data sorted through computer software in the week after the election. Even so, in order to get a preliminary result for the waiting media, even experienced staff are struggling towards the end of the night.
“By the time you count the Senate you just don’t care any more,” our insider said. This is backed up by a Crikey tipster who worked on election day and told us that at one polling station, “a lot of below-the-line votes end up in the informal pile because when sorting the giant ballot papers you got into the habit of just scanning the 37-odd boxes above the line for a No. 1. I rescued quite a few BTL votes from the informal pile, and I’m sure there were more.”
Below-the-line voters can be assured their votes would have been counted in the second count with fresh scrutiny, but it raises the question of whether staff should be pushed so hard when their work will be re-done anyway. PhD candidate at the Australian National University and election expert Jennifer Rayner says the “only thing that really matters is that the amount of ballot papers handed out is the number they have at the end of the day”.
“A lot of these problems are not administration difficulties but from the politicians themselves … there are many people with fingers in the pie.”
Multiple tipsters highlighted the lack of experience in the ranks of AEC casuals. “Some of the other OICs had never worked for the AEC before, I felt really sorry for them,” one reported. “They had three hours’ training and one [hour] of computer training before the election, it’s not enough … Some of the staff were really just there as admin staff, you need people who are passionate about running elections.”
More staff with more experience are needed, especially after 6pm, says another electoral worker. “The most sensible thing would be to bring in a new team of specialist (preferably experienced) vote counters at 6pm who are awake and fresh and aware of the rules regarding informalities, etc. I realise that this further increases the number of employees needed on the day. A further solution might be simply to do away with the vote counting on the night, as everything gets recounted by the AEC in the days after the election anyway,” the worker wrote to Crikey.
An experienced scrutineer for the Greens with experience in administering elections stresses that, for the most part, election booths are run well by experienced people — only some were “poor” — but there is a trend of more badly run booths at each election. He says the training budget appears to have been cut and that an “increasingly corporate structure” means too much emphasis is placed on efficiency, when “efficiency isn’t the most important thing, getting it right is”. He says that instead of bringing in new staff at 6pm, there should be more staff throughout the day so that staff can rotate and have proper breaks. “The solution is to run the system with a bit more leeway for problems,” he said.
The AEC says staff are adequately trained and know they are signing up to a long day. “The AEC employs over 70,000 staff to work on election day and the AEC clearly requires that it is a long day, from opening of polls to close of polling places on election night,” Phil Diak said. “It is an environment that had existed for a very long time. The AEC has successfully recruited staff to work on the federal election and to provide the services that are required.”
Multiple experts told Crikey the blame doesn’t lie with the AEC but with the parliamentarians who want efficiency without supplying the funds.
Rayner says there is a “solid, robust” electoral system in Australia, and “we’ve never had a case of electoral fraud proven”. Campbell Sharman, adjunct professor in the department of political science at the University of British Columbia in Canada (previously of the University of Western Australia), says we “shouldn’t get too hot under the collar” over mistakes like the missing votes in WA. But he says the AEC can be seen as too bureaucratic, and the problems are not with the way elections are administered but from politicians who cling to flexible election timetables.
“Governments don’t like long election campaigns,” Sharman said. “A lot of these problems are not administration difficulties but from the politicians themselves … there are many people with fingers in the pie.”
So why count the Senate ballots on the night anyway? The only thing people are interested in is the House of Representatives results, who will be forming the government. And the House of Representatives voting is much more straightforward.
Who really cares in September who will be the new senators next July, when it’s not going to change the government? If this had been the practice, I might not be required to return to the polling booth next year for a fresh senate election.
“……been quick to point the finger at the Electoral Commission, but it seems we should be looking to Canberra.”
C’mon Crikey, you can do better than this. What does it mean? Did the city of Canberra stuff up the election?
Using a metonym is lazy journalism. If you mean the government then say so.
Counting all ballot papers on the night is a basic accountability measure, so must continue.
There were 2 AEC auditors (at least that’s who they said they were) overseeing the count at our booth in Queanbeyan. Hadn’t seen that before.
Yes, reasonable article.
In my experience (northern Brisbane) AEC training is actually very thorough and most adequate for the tasks I have performed at the last 3 federal elections. The trainers are knowledgeable and efficient. The poll workers are largely committed and positive about their roles and take their responsibility seriously.
Relax. Australian Elections are fair and the electoral system works. Clive Palmer’s rants about the AEC are comparable to nearly everything else he says. (ie. Wendy Deng’s a Chinese spy, there’s aliens in his soup, he’s building a Titanic, he’s gonna be Prime Minster next week, there’s lizards working in the Tax office…. ) (Ok I made some of them up. 🙂 )
The idea of efficiency presented here seems confused doesn’t it?.
“An “increasingly corporate structure” means too much emphasis is placed on efficiency, when “efficiency isn’t the most important thing, getting it right is””
Efficiency = work output / time
So better output in the same time *is* more efficient, surely?
Maybe the problem is better expressed as “cutting things short eats into output quality so it erodes efficiency.”
BTW the trend toward pre-poll voting surely will contribute to less resources being put into Polling Places in the future… does that need questioning?
Maybe it’s time for:
a) **fixed** election dates ie. every 3 years on the first Saturday in September (or June or 2nd Saturday after pentecost or whatever) will allow better resource planning (materials, hiring and training etc)
b)encourage/campaign/promote pre-poll voting up to about 50% of votes cast. (Should be really easy given the number of people working full time on a Saturday and unable to vote in their local division as a result… means less people will be reliant on last minute declaration voting on polling day.)
c) Ruling out all talk of electronic vote recording until a method can be proposed that verifies ballots beyond doubt. Voting machines can be hacked to record votes wrongly far too easily to be reliable or trusted IMHO (and I’ll cite the numerous US horror stories…) Pencil on an accounted ballot paper into a secure ballot box (in some overseas countries this is even called “the Australian Vote”) works dammit and remains relatively cheap and quick.
d) Ruling out of voter ID schemes (as currently under consideration in Qld). Just because it’s undemocratic ok?
e) Simplify senate voting by giving every voter six votes for every half senate election, and have ’em simply allocate the six votes as they choose to their favoured candidates (and ignore all other candidates…) Candidates with the most votes win. No preferences. No preferences deals. Could lead to tiny little ballot papers with room for just six names (or the codes or numbers for the six candidates chosen by the voter). Easy and quick to count… bit first past the post but surely a better system than the current pig’s breakfast which no one but Antony Green and some smartar*e, shadowy Electoral Preference Consultants seem to know or care anything about…
…and while we’re at it, let’s have a Russell Brand styled “none of the above” box on all ballot papers to allow voters to send the message that I kept hearing when I was doing my little job at the local polling place last Sept 7.
That is, that for many, many people the choices for political representation are not inspiring, not desirable and not even acceptable.
This notion and others even more radical are not being discussed in political discourse right now. They need to be. The consequences of failing to address them are lethal to democracy in the long run. That can be in no one’s best interest.
Brand is wrong. You should be required to vote. Australia has got that right. But you should not be forced to choose sh*t-head A over scum-b*g B because there’s no alternative.
Sorry went off-topic there….
At my polling booth, in Brunswick East Victoria, there was a slightly shambolic air to proceedings. There were unnecessarily long lines, as too many staff were handing ballot papers to the few absentees who presented and too few to the rest of us. Personally I found the cardboard ballot box unreassuring as to security, while the cardboard tubing barriers were merely untidy. Ballot papers were strewn around the booths and not being collected.
On the topic of electoral reform, why not a system where you can vote preferentially above the line, choosing to distribute anything from 1 to X preferences, where X is the number of parties/independents presenting? The suggestion of exactly 6 from the Greens is too self-serving.
Lastly, as to counting, if Australia Post can manage recognition of postal addresses then it should be easy enough for AEC to run ballot papers through vote counting machines that recognise numerals in standardised boxes. Pen not pencil should be used to imrpove integrity. I agree there seems no need to count the Senate votes immediately.
Lastly, why not conduct basic ID checks at polling booths? It’ seems terribly easy to front up with a name and address (or read the upside down address from the roll when asked for it) and effectively steal someone else’s vote.