The Australian Electoral Commission has admitted it failed to properly secure 75 Senate ballot papers during a pre-polling visit to a West Australian aged-care facility, with those people now required to vote yet another time.



The commission issued an apology for its handling of ballot papers just two days before the West Australian Senate election rerun triggered by the loss of votes from the September federal election.

A mobile polling team attended a Royal Australian Air Force Association aged-care facility in Merriwa on Monday “and identified that there was a problem with the construction of the ballot box in its possession”, the commission said on Thursday.

“The team applied a temporary solution; however the container used was later found to be not fully secure in accordance with the requirements of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918,” it said.

“The AEC has since obtained legal advice about this matter, and those affected voters are considered to have not voted in this election. Accordingly, the AEC is able to remedy this situation and protect the franchise of those voters by enabling them to validly cast their vote.”

The commission said a mobile team would make arrangements to assist the affected voters “as soon as practicable”. It apologised “for any inconvenience to the residents and others affected by this event”.

The Liberal party had sought an explanation over claims the 75 votes were put in an unsecured ballot box, according to the West Australian newspaper, which broke the story.

The incident is a blow to the commission, which had been seeking to rebuild its credibility after admitting it lost 1370 WA Senate ballots cast at the September election.

In February, the head of the commission, Ed Killesteyn, and the electoral officer for Western Australia, Peter Kramer, resigned after the high court, sitting as the court of disputed returns, declared the West Australian Senate election result void.

The ruling prompted the special minister of state, Michael Ronaldson, to call on the commission to ensure it never repeated such a failure of process.

A report by the former federal police chief Mick Keelty said the fate of the 1370 missing ballots was “not likely to ever be fully explained” but identified a “loose planning culture in Western Australia”, a complacent attitude towards ballot papers, inadequate training, poor management practices, flawed quality control and lax supervision. Those votes were lost during a recount of the close West Australian Senate election results.

One of the commission's most outspoken critics, the Palmer United party leader, Clive Palmer, said it appeared electoral officials were yet to learn the lessons from the federal election.

Palmer made the unsubstantiated claim that the placing of the 75 pre-poll ballots in an unsecured box "could be an attempt to rig this election".

"The system WA voters will face in the Senate re-election on Saturday is obviously still flawed and there are no guarantees we won’t have another debacle on our hands," he said.

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said on Thursday he was concerned about the fresh claims. During an ABC interview,he recalled his reaction to the news. "I went, oh my goodness, it's not groundhog day."

Shorten said the initial incident that triggered the West Australian Senate rerun was bad enough. "I sincerely hope that we get this process right because I don't think anyone would be impressed by losing votes or contaminating votes on a second separate occasion,” he said. “But let’s just see how it goes. I’m not going to panic yet.”

The Greens senator Scott Ludlam, whose job is on the line in the Senate election rerun, said he was "extremely concerned" by the prospect of further AEC mistakes.

"Given the expense and the inconvenience that this has caused people and the fact that we have now been on an election footing effectively for a year and we still don't know the final makeup of the Senate, I think every Western Australian would be calling on the AEC to take care of the ballot papers this time, please, so that we have an election that people can have confidence in," Ludlam told the ABC.

The Western Australia-based deputy Liberal leader, Julie Bishop, told the ABC: "We have every reason to hope that the electoral commission will be able to conduct this election properly. The people of Western Australia deserve no less."

The Liberal party's state director, Ben Morton, told the West Australian he had sought clarification "because this could have very serious consequences for this election".

Labor's state secretary, Simon Mead, told the newspaper: "If this is true, this is a stupid mistake and an absolute disgrace."

The Keelty report about September's incident said the lack of focus on detailed logistic requirements had created an environment where ballot security might have been compromised.

It said ballots "were left in open, unsecured boxes at the recount centre overnight, in the custody of a lone security guard, who had not been vetted by the AEC for political neutrality, without CCTV coverage".