Almost all of the first preference votes have been counted in the ACT election, the ACT Electoral Commissioner, Mr Phil Green said today.

“Only around 4,000 additional votes remain to be counted. These include postal votes, declaration votes and interstate votes,” Mr Green said.

“These votes are all enclosed in declaration envelopes that need to be checked against the electoral roll to determine whether the elector is entitled to vote in the election. This is a painstaking process that will continue for the rest of this week,” Mr Green said.

“Some media reports have indicated that more than 30,000 votes remain to be counted. This is incorrect”, Mr Green said.

“While the difference between the number of votes counted to date and the number of electors on the ACT electoral roll is around 30,000, not all electors on the roll can be expected to vote. In a typical ACT election, only 90% of enrolled electors turnout to vote. Many of those who do not vote will have a valid and sufficient reason for failing to vote – for example, if they are ill or overseas,” Mr Green said.

No additional first preference votes will be counted today (Wednesday 24 October). Around 2500 votes are expected to be counted tomorrow (Thursday 25 October), including postal votes and votes cast in small numbers at polling places for particular electorates, which are consolidated at the central scrutiny centre to ensure the secrecy of the ballot.

Today, Elections ACT staff are continuing the detailed process of electronically scanning and verifying every preference written on every paper ballot cast in the election.

Every evening this week, Elections ACT intends to post an interim distribution of preferences on its website. These figures will consist of ballot papers counted for whole polling places to ensure they do not skew the results posted. However, users of these results are cautioned that they only represent a sample of preferences, and the final outcome cannot be determined until all of the preferences are counted.

“As postal votes can be received up until Friday 26 October, the final result cannot be determined until all of these votes have been processed and included in the count. This cannot occur until Saturday 27 October at the earliest,” Mr Green said.

Media Note: Elections ACT will endeavour to post interim distributions of preferences between 6.00 and 7.30 pm each evening this week. If you would like to have these results emailed to you as soon as they are available, please send an email request to elections@act.gov.au .

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