SA Electoral Commissioner Mick Sherry praises voters, staff and volunteers in successful re-cap of Election Day amid ‘challenging’ circumstances
Election Day is always full of logistic issues, but if you add BYO pencils, long lines and social distancing, the task gets even bigger. But SA’s election boss has given a positive verdict.
State Election
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Election day ordinarily is enough of a logistic nightmare for polling staff, but adding face masks, social distancing, BYO pencils and hand sanitiser to the mix, and the task is only made harder.
Long lines were reported throughout the state, as density measures were enforced across polling booths.
An elector’s pants fell down while meeting Labor leader Peter Malinauskas at Woodville Gardens, a 99-year-old woman collapsed while waiting to vote in the Badcoe electorate and the SA Electoral Commission’s website experienced crashes and bugs throughout the day.
But SA Electoral Commissioner Mick Sherry complimented South Australia’s voters, polling booth staff and volunteers, and said he felt “quite encouraged” with co-operation across the board.
“I’d like to really acknowledge the community of South Australia for tuning up today,” he said.
“I know that in the Covid environment there might have been some concerns, but we’ve put a lot of measures in place to ensure the safety of electors at this particular election.”
Mr Sherry said the Electoral Commission were pleased to see a “huge turnout”.
“Any election is a significant logistic event, and then you put this Covid overlay on (and it) presented some quite big challenges for us to navigate,” Mr Sherry said.
Introducing hygiene officers that cleaned polling screens and surfaces, ordering single use pencils, and ensuring extra masks were available for electors were just some of the considerations Mr Sherry’s staff managed throughout Saturday.
He said the 7000 Electoral Commission staff would be counting until about 10pm or 11pm on Saturday night.
Mr Sherry said a total 21,316 South Australians applied to the Electoral Commission for a voting pack for Saturday’s election because they had Covid and were in isolation, or because they were a close contact.
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