Nearly 2,000 ballot papers went missing on election night and were later recovered from the Sydney home of a temporary Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) worker, the ABC has revealed.
The AEC confirmed in a statement the sealed container—holding 1,866 House of Representatives votes from the seat of Barton—was not delivered to the central counting centre on May 3, after being collected from the Hurstville polling place.
The commission said the container remained sealed and intact and the incident did not affect the outcome of the election, with Labor’s Ash Ambihaipahar securing the seat with more than 60 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote over Liberal candidate Fiona Douskou.
However, the AEC has launched an investigation into how the container ended up in the possession of the transport officer and remained undetected for days. Officials only noticed it was missing during a routine recount last week as part of the mandatory second count of all House of Representatives ballot papers.
In a statement, the AEC said all votes were counted in the presence of scrutineers on election night, and results were reported in real time. Ballot papers were then securely packaged, with two House of Representatives containers expected to be transported. Only one was returned.
“The staff member responsible erroneously returned one less container than was expected.”
After several days of inquiries, AEC staff recovered the missing container from the transport officer’s home. The exact location inside the home was not disclosed, but the recovery took place during a conversation outside the property.
The AEC said the security seals on the container were unbroken and that all ballot papers were accounted for. The fresh scrutiny count matched the original tally, confirming the result was unaffected.
While the AEC does not believe the incident was deliberate, it described the worker as having been “indifferent to the implications” of the missing materials and acknowledged “challenges in communicating” with the individual.
“This shouldn’t have occurred, and the AEC is deeply concerned,” the commission said, adding that work is underway to review its return-of-materials process.
With more than 100,000 staff employed and over 90,000 ballot paper transport containers used across 7,000 voting venues nationwide, the AEC said such errors are rare, but reinforced the importance of robust safeguards.
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