With no clear result available for yesterday’s federal election, attention has turned to how the Australian Electoral Commission will count the outstanding votes.
Today, Sunday, th AEC will concentrate on arrangements for the exchange of declaration votes around the country. All postal votes, absent votes and any kind of declaration vote requiring an identity and enrolment check need to be delivered to the correct electorate. The administrative work on these takes place today.
The counting of these votes will being to show up in the results on Tuesday and Wednesday. Postal votes will continue to arrive for the next 13 days.
Media statement from the Australian Electoral Commission.
AEC media statement: counting
On election night, the AEC counted more than 11 million House of Representatives votes. These included the votes cast in polling places on election day and votes cast in early voting centres. These results, down to polling place level, are available on the AEC’s Tally Room. The AEC also conducted a first preference count of Senate ballot papers cast in polling places.
The AEC’s focus today, Sunday 3 July, is on the declaration vote exchange. The declaration vote exchange is where the large numbers of absent, interstate, postal and other declaration votes are reconciled, sorted and packaged ready for despatch to the home division from Monday. Only once the declaration votes are received and processed in the home division can the counting of these votes begin. Any counting today will be limited to the small numbers of votes collected by AEC mobile teams.
On Monday, the AEC will continue the process of verifying more than one million postal votes already returned to the AEC so that they can be admitted to the count beginning on Tuesday. The legislation requires that postal votes are included in the count if the vote is received by the Returning Officer within 13 days of election day.
In parallel, the count of Senate pre-poll ordinary votes and any remaining House of Representatives ordinary pre-poll votes not already counted on Saturday night may also start on Monday.
