AEC confirms missing ballots found at electoral worker’s home

Almost 2000 ballots that went missing on election night have been found at the Sydney home of a temporary AEC worker.

Almost 2000 ballots that went missing on election night in the Sydney electorate of Barton have now been recovered at the home of a temporary AEC worker.

The ballots, stored in a secure container, were collected by the worker from the Hurstville polling booth on May 3 and were then not delivered to the commission’s central counting centre.

Officials only noticed the missing container when a routine recount of the votes began.

“The AEC’s tracking processes for ballot paper transport containers identified that one of the two transport containers for the Hurstville polling place was not returned to the central counting centre on election night as it should have been,” an AEC spokesperson told NewsWire.

The secure container was found at the home of a temporary AEC worker. It has not explained how the ballots ended up there. Picture: NewsWire/ David Crosling

“Ballot papers were securely packaged in the presence of scrutineers with an authorised transport officer collecting two ballot paper transport containers for delivery to a central counting centre to await further processing.

“The staff member responsible erroneously returned one less container than was expected.”

After exhausting numerous lines of inquiry, the box was recovered from the worker -undamaged and unopened - early last week.

All 1866 votes had already been counted and did not affect the result in the seat of Barton.

The spokesperson said further investigations were under way to ensure the incident did not happen again.

“The AEC takes ballot paper handling extremely seriously and deeply regrets this incident,” they added.

It has not been explained how the ballots ended up at the worker’s home.

Labor candidate Ash Ambihaipahar won the seat with more than 60 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote, beating the Liberal Party’s Fiona Douskou.