Vote recording stuff up hits Mulka, NT’s most marginal seat, as NTEC orders recheck of count
TWO vote recording errors have surfaced in the Northern Territory’s most marginal seat
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TWO vote recording errors have surfaced in the Northern Territory’s most marginal seat.
The NT Electoral Commission, in a statement on Wednesday, said a recheck of votes in Mulka had been undertaken after two count recording errors were discovered.
Despite the errors Independent MLA Yingiya Guyula is still ahead of Labor’s Lynne Walker and is expected by psephologists to win.
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According to the NTEC count figures phoned through from the Nhulunbuy voting centre on Saturday were incorrect.
“The recording errors were discovered part-way through yesterday afternoon’s recheck of the division after the ballots had been transferred to the Darwin Scrutiny Centre,” the NTEC said in a statement.
There were no scrutineers from either party at the Darwin Scrutiny Centre at the time, therefore the recheck was suspended.”
The full recheck began at 9am on Wednesday.
According to the NTEC, the issues lay in the vote count recorded for “Mobile Team 1” and the “Nhulunbuy EVC”.
The corrected count now stands that Mr Guyula secured 424 votes via Mobile Team 1 and Ms Walker secured 956.
In Nhulunbuy, Mr Guyula secured 928 votes and Ms Walker secured 502.
At the 2016 election, Mr Guyula secured 14.7 per cent of the Nhulunbuy township vote to Ms Walker’s 85.3 per cent, while according to the NTEC, in 2020 Mr Guyula’s township vote has skyrocketed to 64.9 per cent to Ms Walker’s 35.1%.
Mr Guyula won by just 8 votes after preferences at the 2016 election, making it the most marginal seat in the NT.
The current vote margin in the division of Mulka is 302, with declaration votes, further absent votes and postal votes received before the deadline at 12 noon on 4 September still to be counted.
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Mr Loganathan said that while the errors were unfortunate, the purpose of conducting re-checks is to identify issues such as these.
“This is why the NTEC continually reinforces that the Saturday night count is an indicative count only,” Mr Loganathan said.
“The recheck of all divisions is an essential, best-practice process that is undertaken by every electoral commission in the country.”
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