Federal Election 2016: Why votes aren’t being counted today

WE’RE all keenly awaiting the final vote totals from Saturday’s election. So why don’t the people counting them get cracking?

On election night the AEC only counts ‘ordinary votes’ from polling places. Picture: AP

THANKS to a knife-edge count of votes, we have no result today and an inconclusive Federal Election outcome.

Vote counting stopped at 2am on Sunday morning and won’t resume until Tuesday leaving the fate of the nation effectively on hold while everyone takes a breather.

But why does the Australian Electoral Commission not get cracking on the vote counting today?

On the night of the election, the AEC only counts “ordinary votes” from polling places.

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That means first preference and two-candidate-preferred votes for House of Representatives ballot papers, and first preferences for the Senate ballot papers.

The AEC says it has counted more than 11 million House of Representatives votes.

Counting of absentee and postal votes is carried out in the week after election day. This year, about 2.5 million people cast their votes early.

Today the AEC will continue the process of verifying more than one million postal votes.

After counting stopped on Sunday, all ballots will now be sent to secure locations in each electorate for counting.

This was one of the recommendations of a review into the bungled WA Senate vote in 2013, which saw 1370 ballots go missing, forcing a fresh election and leading to the resignation of the head of the AEC.

“The AEC’s focus (on Sunday) is on the declaration vote exchange,” the AEC said in a statement.

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“The declaration vote exchange is where the large numbers of absent, interstate, postal and other declaration votes are reconciled, sorted and packaged ready for dispatch 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 (on Sunday) 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 AEC says while that is going on, the count of pre-poll Senate votes and “any remaining House of Representatives ordinary pre-poll votes not already counted on Saturday” may resume on Monday.