AEC releases voting preference information recorded for WA missing votes

The AEC today publicly released the information available to the AEC about the voting preferences of the missing votes from the first WA Senate count.

This information is recorded by the AEC as part of standard vote counting procedures.

The missing votes came from one polling place in the Division of Forrest (Bunbury East) and three polling places from the Division of Pearce (Henley Brook, Mt Helena and Wundowie). A fifth category – a small number of provisional votes – were cast in the Division of Pearce and were informal.

Final data integrity checking undertaken prior the distribution of preferences (to determine elected Senators on Saturday 2 November) found that five fewer votes were missing from Bunbury East than had been earlier reported. Voters’ preferences for the 1,370 votes unable to be located, checked, verified or included in the recount are shown below:

Division Forrest Pearce Total ballot papers Polling Place Bunbury East Henley Brook Mt Helena Wundowie Provisional Count 1 Group A Smokers Rights 8 8 C Australian Christians 3 3 D Help End Marijuana Prohibition 7 7 G Shooter and Fishers 14 14 J Secular Party of Australia 1 1 K Australian Independents 3 1 4 L The Wikileaks Party 6 5 11 M Katter's Australian Party 2 1 3 N Family First Party 11 11 O No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics 1 1 2 Q Stop the Greens 3 3 S The Greens (WA) 112 112 T Animal Justice Party 12 9 21 Z Australian Labor Party 164 164 AA Liberal 350 370 166 886 Sub-total formal votes 151 350 393 356 0 1250 Informal votes 80 29 11 120 TOTAL VOTES 231 350 393 385 11 1370 1139

National media contact:

02 6271 4419

media@aec.gov.au