In many parts of the world, the result of elections is a foregone conclusion. Ballot stuffing is rife and the people who count votes are carefully selected to deliver the result that the ruling power has decreed. As a consequence, elections are followed by street riots and the losers refuse to accept the verdict.
That has never been the case in Australia. Our elections are held under the supervision of the Electoral Commission and the actual vote is under close scrutiny to deter irregularities. The vote count is held in the presence of scrutineers from all the interested political parties - and when the votes go up on the board in the tally room - they are universally accepted to be correct.
The September 7 national election cost the taxpayer $ 113 million, and for the first time in this country's history - there has been a hiccup delaying a final result in deciding who sits in the Senate representing Western Australia.
The initial count was so close that it immediately triggered a recount - and when that was held the number of votes counted fell 1375 short of the original count. Somewhere in the counting process, a bundle of over a thousand votes had just " disappeared ".
The Electoral Commission is faced with a daunting conundrum. A former Federal Police commissioner has been tasked with holding an investigation to find those missing votes, but it also raises the question of whether the entire state of Western Australia should have to face a fresh Senate election. If that happens, the cost will be measured in millions of dollars.
It is also causing some people to suggest we change to electronic voting in future elections, to bring a much faster result and to modernise the poll in what has become the " age of the computer ". There are obvious gains in this suggestion, but whether pressing a button in place of putting a pen to paper would be totally acceptable in the " fairness stakes " remains to be seen.
Paper voting may be old fashioned, but as this present problem illustrates - any irregularity is out in the open for all to see. If the numbers coming out of a machine didn't meet with expectations, would we have the same trust in the system - or would we believe that the boffins are capable of manipulating the system to get the result they desire ?
It says plenty about public confidence that this hiccup has not produced accusations of voter fraud. Voter confidence has remained intact and very likely a logical explanation will be found - and probably those missing votes will be discovered and returned to the count.
That old adage - " If it 'aint broke - don't fix it " comes to mind !
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