Election 2023: Auditor-General to conduct review after Herald investigation discovered voting errors

The Auditor-General will conduct a review after a Herald investigation found vote counting errors by the Electoral Commission after this year’s general election.

In a statement this evening, Auditor-General John Ryan said the review will examine “aspects of the quality assurance processes”.

After the official results of the general election were published on November 3, the Herald alerted the Election Commission to irregularities in its counting before further inquires found a total of 15 voting places with “data entry errors” and an entire ballot box from the East Coast being missed.

Amended official results were published on November 9.

“Although these errors had no effect on the outcome of the results of the election or the result in any individual electorate, the Commission had expected its quality assurance processes to have identified and corrected those errors before the official count was completed,” the Office of the Auditor-General said in its statement today.

“It is important that the Commission is able to have confidence that the errors it has identified will not re-occur in future elections. Avoiding these errors in future is also important for the public’s trust in the vote counting process. Therefore, after discussion with the Commission, we have decided to carry out review work about the Electoral Commission’s quality assurance processes for counting votes.”

The review, the Auditor-General said, will explore why the vote counting errors occurred; what quality assurance policies, processes and measures were in place in relation to those errors; the extent to which the design, operation and implementation of those measures was effective; what the Commission did once those errors came to light; and any improvements that can be identified.

“We will not make any public comment while our work is under way,” the Auditor-General’s office said. “We intend to complete our work and publish the results by April 2024. We anticipate that will also involve tabling a report in Parliament.”

The Electoral Commission board had earlier said it would request an independent review to ensure the errors don’t occur again.

Chief electoral officer Karl Le Quesne earlier apologised for the mistakes and said it was “disappointing they were not picked up in the quality assurance processes and falls short of our expectations”.

“People should have confidence in the integrity of the official count and the amended results.”

The Electoral Commission’s “full check” came after the Herald found hundreds of votes had been wrongly assigned to fringe parties, while the National Party had received none at some voting booths.