Lost votes would change Senate result
The booth at Mt Helena has emerged as the most critical polling place in the WA Senate farce, with more missing votes capable of affecting the result cast there than anywhere else.
Two election bloggers have compared the initial counting at the four booths where 1375 missing ballots were cast with the recount to determine how their loss affected each party.
Bloggers Ben Raue, of The Tally Room, and an anonymous poster on Truth Seeker concluded that Labor and Palmer United Party candidates would have prevailed had the missing votes been in the recount. But just one vote would cause that outcome from a crucial preference distribution, the bloggers say.
The result is at odds with the Australian Election Commission recount that overturned this outcome in favour of the Greens and the Australian Sports Party.
But the closeness of such a result and multiple discrepancies among recounted votes would make it difficult to accept the once-counted - now lost - ballots, they said.
The anonymous poster, who election columnist William Bowe said was "clearly well on top of the situation", found 14 missing votes for the Shooters and Fishers Party were cast at Mt Helena.
Their loss was critical because the Shooters party fell 12 votes behind the Australian Christians in the recount.
As a result, the Shooters' preferences flowed to the Greens' Scott Ludlam and Australian Sports Party's Wayne Dropulich instead of the Christians' preferences electing Dio Wang from the PUP and Labor's Louise Pratt.
The Shooters attracted preferences from the Australian Independents and Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party while the Christians attracted preferences from the No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics.
The AEC said yesterday former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty would be in Perth next week to investigate for an interim report this month.
Former WA Liberal Anthony Fels, who ran for Bob Katter's Australian Party, is set to join Labor, the PUP and possibly the AEC itself in asking the High Court as the Court of Disputed Returns to resolve the mess.
The recount did not affect his prospects, but Mr Fels said a fresh poll was needed for a "fair and square" result to uphold Australia's electoral integrity.
