Alexander Hyde wants to reopen trial to have Adelaide City Council election declared void

New documents reveal an Adelaide City council candidate helped enrol hundreds of voters ahead of the local government election, which saw him win a seat by just 24 votes.

Adelaide City councillor Jing Li helped enrol 500 new voters in the hotly-contested local government election, according to Freedom of Information documents.

But Mr Li said the act was “legal” and he has denied doing anything wrong.

The documents, obtained by The Advertiser, included 16 emails from Mr Li to council staff with the name, phone number, address and respective wards of the new residents.

Former councillor Alexander Hyde has asked the Court of Disputed Returns to submit the documents as evidence in his attempt to declare the 2022 November election result void.

It is understood Mr Li’s counsel would oppose the application given the evidence phase of the trial has concluded and the parties are awaiting a verdict.

The application will be heard later this month.

Adelaide City councillor Jing Li has been accused of helping to enrol 500 new voters ahead of council elections. Picture: Brenton Edwards

Mr Hyde has petitioned the court to overturn his loss and unseat Mr Li. Pictures: Brenton Edwards

Mr Hyde has petitioned the court to overturn his loss and unseat Mr Li from the Central Ward, in which he was victorious by just 24 votes.

Mr Hyde alleged in court Mr Li defeated him only because he and his associates engaged in “illegal practices” resulting in “illegitimate votes”.

He further claims those actions were captured by three covert recordings.

Mr Li has repeatedly denied all of Mr Hyde’s accusations and said he was not involved in illegal practices.

In regards to the enrolment of new voters, Mr Li told The Advertiser: “The act is completely legal otherwise I wouldn’t have done that”.

“If it was illegal the council would have reported it. I was sending information on their (the voters) behalf.”

During closing submissions in February, the court heard the Electoral Commissioner’s investigator Ian Jones had gathered statutory declarations of enrolment irregularities.

In court documents, enrolled voter Yimei Wang told Mr Jones: “I did not complete the application for enrolment form” and the “signature is not mine”.

Voter Ester Celine David emailed Mr Jones stating: “she did not recognise the signature from the enrolment form”, the court documents state.

It is unclear whether these voters were enrolled by Mr Li.

A handwriting expert, retained by Mr Hyde, was also used to determine the legitimacy of voter signatures on enrolment forms and ballot envelopes.

Signatures on the ballot envelope (top) and application form (bottom) are not comparable.

Signatures from ballot envelopes and the corresponding application forms for local government elections, which form part of Alex Hyde's case

Forensic document examiner Clifford Hobden told the court he compared 117 pairs of signatures and could not conclude whether any were signed by the same writer.

“I do not know of any reliable methodology for determining whether a pair of signatures have been written by one person without an assessment of a number of specimen signatures,” court documents state.

He said the proportion of “mismatching” signatures was 80 of 117 pairs which was very high, the court documents state.

However, he noted signatures by persons of Asian origin are often characterised by an Asian script for one type of document and Roman script for other documents – this was evident in 38 of the 80 mismatching pairs.

During the case, the Electoral Commission of South Australia discovered software used to tally the election result malfunctioned and the mistake went unnoticed for more than a year.

The error by the EzyCount program meant Mr Li won Central Ward by 24 votes, not 31 votes as reported at the time.