The $37 Million Election That Lost 600 Ballots

$37 million. That is what South Australia spent running its 2026 state election. Nearly ten million more than the one before it. Six hundred ballot papers went uncounted. A party volunteer got to physically count votes. Thousands of poll workers did not get paid. And the man in charge went on leave.

The Electoral Commission of South Australia has been sent to an independent review after what an ABC source called “unprecedented” failures. Not at one booth. Not in one phase. Across the whole thing. Voting, counting, paying staff, communicating with the public. Three electorates turned up uncounted ballot papers weeks after polling day. The review was announced 31 March. Three weeks on, nobody can say who is running it, what it covers, or when it finishes.

This is not a story about one bad election day. It is about what happens when the body that runs democracy stops working. And three weeks after a review was announced, the public still has no details.

Narungga

The Yorke Peninsula seat of Narungga became the face of this mess. One Nation’s Chantelle Thomas, a 30-year-old photographer from Kadina, won it by 74 votes out of 24,079 formal ballots. Close enough that every single procedural failure mattered.

At one polling booth, ECSA was so short-staffed that a One Nation volunteer was allowed to count votes. Not watch. Count. Under South Australian electoral law, volunteers observe. They do not touch ballots. The distinction exists for a reason. When a party volunteer is physically handling the count, the chain of custody is broken. The appearance of impartiality is gone.

At another booth in the same electorate, commission staff told voters to leave their how-to-vote cards at the door.

None of this was a surprise. Two days before the election, ECSA was publicly begging for booth workers. The staffing crisis was known. It was not fixed.

Then came the ballots.

Twenty-five days after polling day, Acting Commissioner Leah McLay announced 81 previously uncounted ballot papers for Narungga had been found. Seventy-seven absent ordinary votes and four declaration votes, cast at booths in the neighbouring district of Stuart. Sealed in boxes. Transported back to commission headquarters. Never opened.

The original winning margin was 58 votes. The missing ballots numbered 81. You do the maths.

A further count was held on 17 April. Thomas picked up 46 of the 76 formal votes. Liberal candidate Tania Stock got 30. The margin went from 58 to 74. One Nation retained the seat with a slightly bigger buffer.

So the result did not change. That is not the point. Eighty-one ballot papers sat in sealed boxes for nearly a month in a seat decided by 58 votes. If those papers had broken the other way, someone else would be sitting in South Australia’s parliament right now.

The rest of the mess

Narungga grabbed the headlines. But the failures ran statewide.

ECSA got the two-candidate preference pairings wrong in roughly half of all 47 seats. Antony Green, the ABC election analyst, found the commission had “abandoned preference counts in seats where it clearly undertook a count between the wrong pairing of candidates.” Half the seats. Wrong pairings.

Then on 15 April, more than 600 uncounted ballot papers were found at the Port Pirie pre-poll centre. The 81 Narungga papers were part of this haul. Three sealed boxes that had been returned and never opened.

Six days later, on 21 April, a second stash turned up. This time in Enfield and Newland. Both Labor strongholds. “In the order of dozens,” the SA government said. A courier or staff member had failed to drop off all the ballots.

The timeline reads like a slow-motion car crash. On 19 March, ECSA was pleading for booth workers. On 21 March, iPad crashes turned voters away at booths across the state. At one booth, Ngunguna Community Hall, only 210 of 422 eligible voters had cast ballots by 5:30pm. Twenty-six were turned away because their names were not on the roll. On 2 April, the result was declared. On 3 April, ECSA said sorry for not paying its own staff. On 15 April, the 600 papers. On 21 April, more. On 23 April, ABC reported the commission had “gone to ground.”

Each time, the previous problem was supposedly sorted. Each time, another one surfaced.

One Nation’s own conduct complicates their outrage. Their volunteers were accused at two separate booths of handing out pre-filled how-to-vote cards. The party crying foul about counting integrity while its own people were allegedly filling in preferences for voters is a bad look.

Nobody home

On 31 March, the SA government ordered an independent review into the election. The prompt was a $37 million operation that multiple outlets had described as failing across multiple fronts.

Three weeks later: no reviewer named, no terms of reference published, no due date set.

Electoral Commissioner Mick Sherry has not faced the media since the ballot papers started turning up. Deputy Commissioner Leah McLay has been left to front everything as “Acting Commissioner.” When Sherry went on leave, who authorised it, whether it started before or after the ballot discoveries: nobody is saying.

ECSA is an independent statutory body. The government cannot direct its operations or sack the Commissioner. Attorney-General Kyam Maher has oversight but limited reach. The only parliamentary scrutiny comes through SA’s committee system, controlled by the Labor government that won 34 of 47 seats.

This is not the first time ECSA has been caught out. In 2023, two councillors at Adelaide Plains Council were elected due to counting errors. The matter went to the Court of Disputed Returns. Sherry was cross-examined in court about “ad hoc” scrutiny processes. Lawyers called the result a “landmark decision” in electoral accountability.

That was a council election. This is a state one.

The money

South Australia is not alone here. Western Australia ran its 2025 state election and had almost identical problems: staff shortages, ballot shortages, voters turned away. A WA parliamentary inquiry found the electoral commission there had been underfunded and its IT systems were past it.

Two states. Two years. Same failures. Same root cause.

ECSA’s own records show the 2022 election cost $27.432 million. The 2026 one cost $37 million. Nearly ten million more. Worse in every measurable way. A former ECSA staffer posted on Reddit that Sherry “wasted millions on failed IT systems.” If that is true, the question becomes straightforward. Where did the money go?

The budget breakdown is not public. The IT procurement contracts are not public. The review that might answer these questions has no named reviewer, no published terms, and no deadline.

Right of reply

Acting Commissioner Leah McLay has publicly apologised for the commission’s “failures” and said ECSA would “support any independent external review.” Attorney-General Kyam Maher confirmed the Enfield and Newland numbers and said the review would examine all failures. One Nation SA leader Cory Bernardi has called for a parliamentary inquiry, framing the failures as a systemic integrity issue. One Nation’s official statement said the result should stand if the found votes did not change the outcome.

The other side

ECSA faced genuine staffing challenges. The commission was publicly advertising for booth workers two days before the election. In a tight labour market, filling casual one-day roles is difficult. That context does not excuse a party volunteer counting ballots, but it explains how it happened.

The final count held. The missing Narungga ballots were counted on 17 April and the result was confirmed. One Nation’s margin actually increased from 58 to 74 votes. The outcome did not change.

One Nation’s own conduct complicates their position as aggrieved party. Volunteers from the party were accused at two booths of handing out pre-filled how-to-vote cards. One Nation has not publicly addressed those allegations. The party demanding counting integrity while facing its own procedural questions weakens the framing of pure victimhood.

Electoral commissions worldwide have reported similar staffing and technology challenges since COVID. Western Australia’s 2025 state election had nearly identical problems: staff shortages, ballot shortages, voters turned away. A WA parliamentary inquiry found underfunding and outdated IT systems were the root cause. South Australia’s failures fit a national pattern, not a unique case of incompetence.

The standard

Eighty-one ballot papers. Sealed boxes. Twenty-five days. A seat won by 58 votes.

The system got there in the end. The count held. The right person won. But “got there in the end” is not the standard. Not for the body that runs elections in a democracy. South Australia spent $37 million on an operation that could not count all the votes, could not pay its own people, could not keep its IT running, and could not explain itself when the whole thing fell apart.

Three electorates had uncounted ballots. Three that we know about. The Electoral Commissioner is on leave. The review has no terms. The government that won in a 34-seat landslide controls the only body that can hold the commission to account.

The review has no named reviewer. No published terms of reference. No deadline. That is where things stand.

The way forward

Specific reforms would address the failures seen in South Australia and other states:

• Publish the review terms of reference, reviewer name, and deadline. The public has a right to know who is investigating, what they can examine, and when they report. Three weeks after announcement, none of this is public.

• Standardise national electoral commission staffing and IT requirements. SA and WA had the same failures for the same reasons. A national baseline for staffing levels and technology standards would set a floor that no state commission can fall below.

• Require real-time ballot tracking. Registered post can be tracked from sender to recipient. Ballot papers cannot. Every batch of ballots should be scanned and tracked from booth to counting centre. The technology exists. The 81 Narungga papers sat in sealed boxes for 25 days because no system checked whether they had been processed.

• Mandatory post-election audit of all ballot movements. Every ballot issued should be reconciled against ballots counted, spoiled, or rejected. Discrepancies should trigger automatic investigation, not wait for media reports.

• Publish detailed budget breakdown for every state election. ECSA spent $37 million. The public does not know where it went. IT procurement contracts, staffing costs, and venue hire should be published as a matter of routine. Transparency is the only way to answer the question of whether money was wasted.

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Sources

• ABC News, “Missing votes bungle caps off disastrous poll for SA’s electoral commission” (18 Apr 2026)
• ABC News, “Narungga votes that went missing see margin increase for One Nation” (17 Apr 2026)
• ABC News, “More uncounted votes discovered in SA a month after state election” (21 Apr 2026)
• ABC News, “SA Electoral Commission’s bizarre communications in a crisis” (23 Apr 2026)
• ABC News, “Long waits and frustration as technical glitches delay voting” (21 Mar 2026)
• ABC News, “SA Electoral Commission apologises to staff over pay delay” (3 Apr 2026)
• Antony Green, “SA2026 - it turns out the count ain’t over” (16 Apr 2026)
• AdelaideNow, “One Nation volunteer was allowed to count votes at Narungga booth” (25 Apr 2026)
• AdelaideNow, “SA’s Electoral Commission faces independent review” (31 Mar 2026)
• Guardian Australia, “Discovery of unopened ballots prompts new count in SA seat” (16 Apr 2026)
• InDaily, “SA narrowly avoids Nincompoop democrazy capital” (20 Apr 2026)
• Sky News, “Cory Bernardi calls for parliamentary inquiry” (16 Apr 2026)
• 7NEWS Adelaide, “Mockery of democracy” (Apr 2026)
• ECSA Media Statement, Narungga further count results (17 Apr 2026)
• ECSA 2022 State Election Report, Chapter 7
• Poll Bludger, Narungga 2026 results
• One Nation, “Congratulations Chantelle Thomas” (2 Apr 2026)
• One Nation SA, “Chantelle Thomas MP”
• KelledyJones, “Landmark Decision in Court of Disputed Returns”
• InDaily, “Not your normal group of pollies” (1 Apr 2026)
• ABC News, “One Nation volunteers accused of pre-filled how-to-vote cards” (21 Mar 2026)
• ECSA, “The Electoral Commissioner”
• Reddit r/Adelaide, Former ECSA staffer comment (30 Mar 2026)
• 9News, “SA One Nation candidate retains seat after unopened ballots counted” (17 Apr 2026)