A huge spike in postal votes is being predicted for the upcoming federal election due to Covid, with a warning that it could create delays to counting and uncertainty on the night.
Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers said that 2022 would mark “the biggest, most complex election” in Australia’s history due to Covid and it was expected to cost $470m.
He said during the 2019 federal election they noticed a huge uptick in people heading to the polls early, but this time they were preparing for a rise in postal votes.
“So before the pandemic, pre-poll voting had gone through the roof, but postal voting had remained relatively static,” he said.
“And then when we had the by-elections during the pandemic we kind of saw almost the reverse of that, that pre poll remained pretty static and postal voting increased.”
Mr Rogers said he had met with the Australia Post boss twice and his team was holding weekly meetings to prepare ahead of the election.
The Prime Minister is yet to set a date but it is predicted to be in May.
“We’re doing as much as we can to ensure the postal vote process will be smooth and won’t disenfranchise people along the way,” he said.
But he said this trend could cause another impact – a delay in counting.
“Traditionally about 20 per cent of the seats can’t be determined on the night because they’re too close,” he said.
“We’ve got to wait until the postal votes come in, so if they increase dramatically it just means there’s likely to be more uncertainty on the evening.”
Mr Rogers said they were also working to keep queuing at polls on the day to a minimum – but warned Covid could mean longer waits in lines.
This is due to people having to follow state health orders, like checking in with QR codes, social distancing and wearing masks, which can make it harder to communicate.
“The end result of that is likely to be larger wait times at polling places, whether that is pre poll or on the day,” Mr Rogers said.
“So that’s something we are spending a lot of time working on trying to make sure we’ve got processes in place to minimise wait times.”
He said they’d be employing 105,000 temporary staff – who must be fully vaccinated – which is an increase on previous years to try and provide extra support and reduce lines.
“I don’t have the power to demand that citizens are vaccinated before they vote, nor do I have the power to maxjmtzywndate that party workers or scrutineers are vaccinated,” he said.
“But I’ve made it a condition of employment for our temporary staff to be vaccinated before they work for us.”
Another change this year is that the pre-polling period has been reduced to 12 days from three weeks.
Mr Rogers said they had the option to increase period under pandemic powers if it was deemed necessary.
He said another “twist” would be that they would provide less in-person voting options overseas due to less demand.
And he said they were still investigating how to safely provide mobile voting services to aged care residents.
“We traditionally visit those aged care homes, and we certainly don’t turn this into a super spreader event,” he said.
”We are working with the chief medical officers and indeed with the supervisors of those aged care homes to make sure we provide a safe service.”
Mr Rogers also said it would be “frankly outrageous” if anyone questioned the legitimacy of Australia’s election result, as had been seen in America.
“So if we see some of the stuff that we’ve seen overseas jurisdictions, and I’m not talking about anywhere specific, that would be not only disappointing but frankly outrageous,” he said.
