Inside the Bradfield recount: painstaking and polite, but sometimes heartbreaking

The Guardian

6 days ago

The Bradfield recount is being held in a warehouse in Asquith that appears to have been used for a number of northern Sydney electorates, but on my visit only Bradfield is being counted. A space is set aside as a break room for scrutineers, with large teams for the teal candidate, Nicolette Boele, and the Liberal, Gisele Kapterian, who finished just eight votes ahead after the first complete count.
Given there were more than 6,500 informal votes in Bradfield (5.51% of those cast), the potential for decisions over validity to settle the outcome are obvious.
Each candidate has at least enough scrutineers to have one watching every person counting. The regular counting space is divided into a series of bays. Each bay is dealing with one polling place at a time.
The first part of the process is to conduct a fresh first-preference count. Ballot papers are already in bundles of 50, in first preference order.
Each counter takes one bundle at a time and removes the rubber band, then carefully checks each ballot to ensure it is formal and that the first preference is correct. It is then laid on a pile facing the scrutineers, who can observe it. This process happens more slowly and carefully than you would expect for an election night count.
Once each bundle is fully checked, the rubber band is put back on, and they keep going until all the votes for that candidate have been checked. Once this is done, the counter will take each bundle and hand-count to verify there are 50 in each bundle, and then the other counter sharing that table will swap bundles and do the same check.
During this process, scrutineers are free to challenge a ballot. If they do, the ballot is put in a box to be referred to the divisional returning officer (DRO) for review. While I am there this happens with a decent number of votes – a few dozen for a normal booth size – but not excessively.
Once the primary votes have all been checked, the informal pile is also checked. And then the box of challenged ballots is reviewed by the DRO.
After the DRO review, each booth will redo the distribution of preferences, step by step.
The DRO considers each ballot carefully and makes a ruling about the status of the ballot (who gets the first preference or whether it is informal), stamps the back and fills out a little form explaining their decision. At this point a scrutineer can refer a ballot to the Australian electoral officer (AEO) for a final decision.
The AEO is the senior Australian Election Commission staff member for the state and is effectively the final arbiter in the recount process.
The AEO carefully considers each ballot referred up for adjudication in line with the AEC's formality principles – including by deploying a magnifying glass.
Both the DRO and AEO are careful and cautious, but also very clear on their priorities. The formality principles require them to construe the ballot paper as a whole, and err in favour of the franchise. This means that sometimes when a number is not entirely clear, but context clues make it clear that, for example, it would make sense for a number to be a 4 rather than a 7, they may interpret it that way. Officials can be very strict, while also giving a ballot the best chance of being counted.
Occasionally scrutineers will politely make a case for a particular figure representing a particular number, but there are no arguments or shouting. You wouldn't know these people are in a fierce recount coming down to a handful of votes.
If more people could see how this works it would increase faith in the democratic process, but it is frustrating to see votes that clearly attempt to express a preference ending up informal.
In some cases it appears a voter made a mistake by losing count of where they were up to – a ballot might have unique numbers from one to five and seven, but two sixes instead of a six and an eight.
In plenty of cases, the culprit was bad handwriting. The AEC officials do their best to fairly determine the correct answer, but ultimately sometimes it's too hard. Voters, try your best to write the numbers clearly and distinctly!
But in a lot of cases where votes are made informal, it is perfectly clear who they preferred between Boele and Kapterian – the confusion was irrelevant to the ultimate outcome of the race.
There are various ways the rules could be changed to make it easier for some of these votes to count.
The most extreme would be to adopt optional preferential voting as used in New South Wales state elections, where voters are not required to number any more than one box. But under that system many fewer preferences would flow, and it opens the doors for parties to run 'Just Vote 1' campaigns to discourage opposing voters from using their ballots to their full value.
We could also adopt a system similar to that used in the Senate, where voters are asked to number at least six boxes above the line, but votes are counted even when they number fewer.
Short of those more significant changes, we could adopt more subtle 'savings provisions' that would keep the system as is but would give the AEC more flexibility to accept votes with minor errors. Votes with every box filled out but with a duplicate number could be counted until the vote-counters reach the duplicate number. Or we could require voters to number at least six boxes, but not every box. That would eliminate the problem where voters apply the Senate ballot instructions to the House, and as a result have their lower house vote treated as informal.
Some have also suggested electronic voting. There are concerns about losing the paper trail, and it would be an enormous effort to roll out the technology and deal with the expected technical problems, to thousands of polling booths. Some jurisdictions, such as New Zealand and the ACT, have used a hybrid model where big pre-poll booths use electronic voting but smaller booths still use pencils and paper. Others have suggested a compromise system whereby a voter fills their ballot out on a screen but the ballot is then printed out and submitted by hand.
The AEC plans to conduct a survey of informality after this election, so we know more about why exactly votes have been treated as informal. In the past, this has shown us only about half of informal votes appear to be deliberate.
We probably can't do much about those but it is heartbreaking to watch a ballot paper where the voter clearly made an effort to have their say end up on the informal pile.
Ben Raue attended the Bradfield recount after being appointed as a scrutineer but took no active part in the process. This is an edited and expanded version of an article that first appeared on his blog The Tally Room.