Sophie Mirabella trails as 1003 missing votes uncovered
A MYSTERY pile of 1003 votes misplaced by the electoral commission could seal Coalition industry spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella's fate.

The Australian Electoral Commission has found the votes at the Wangaratta pre-poll station in north-east Victoria.

The votes go to Ms Mirabella’s opponent, the independent Cathy McGowan, the AEC has confirmed.

It will mean, on current voting, Ms Mirabella will trail by 1773 votes, making her task of holding onto the seat increasingly difficult.

An AEC spokesman said that scrutineers had discovered a disparity between the Senate vote and the House of Representatives vote.

The spokesman said there was a 1003 vote difference between the houses and that a search had been undertaken.

This had resulted in a pile of McGowan votes being discovered which will be added to her total this afternoon.

The discovery of the votes will be a huge setback for Ms Mirabella, who is struggling to hold onto a seat that was until Saturday a safe Liberal electorate.

Ms Mirabella held the seat with a two party-preferred margin of 9 per cent until the weekend.

The exact lead held by Ms McGowan is not known because the AEC hasn't updated the numbers in the seat of Indi, which covers a large swathe of north-eastern Victoria, for several hours.

Ms McGowan's previous lead was 770 votes. Liberals have been hoping that Ms Mirabella will be able to pick up a majority of postal votes, which are still being counted.

But if Ms McGowan's lead has blown out by a further 1000, it will become increasingly difficult for Ms Mirabella to claw back the numbers.

If elected, Ms Mirabella is odds-on to be made a key member of Tony Abbott's Cabinet and inner sanctum.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/mirabella-trails-as-1003-missing-votes-uncovered/story-fn9qr68y-1226716939386

The Australian share market has hit its highest level since the global financial crisis struck in 2008.
The All Ordinaries index rose 32 points, or 0.6 per cent, to close at 5,231 - its best result in more than five years.
The ASX 200 index of the largest companies went up 33 points to 5,234, but remained just short of the five-year high it posted in May.
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The local market came out of the blocks early after an overnight rally on international markets as the to the Syrian conflict.
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"The Chinese market is the inspiration behind our market's gains," he told AAP.
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Industrial and finance companies also posted solid rises: McMillan Shakespeare went up 4.3 per cent and Qantas rose 2.2 per cent.
The big four banks all finished the day higher, led by a 1.2 per cent rise for the National Australia Bank; ANZ went up 0.75 per cent, the Commonwealth rose 0.3 per cent and Westpac closed up 0.2 per cent.
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That Mirabella incident is pretty dodgey. The worst part is that it almost gives some of Palmer's claims about electoral integrity some sort of foundation.

Australian politics just pisses me off. Every time one of our politicians open their mouths i cringe and then feel ashamed to think that these people represent our country.

As opposed to the utopia that is politics in Zimbabwe?
Name a country in which politics isn't full of hot air and hyperbole

I've not really been following the story but regardless, the opportunity to multi-vote is massive.

As opposed to the utopia that is politics in Zimbabwe?
Name a country in which politics isn't full of hot air and hyperbole

Im not going to pretend that Zim is all roses and daisies. We all know the truth, but thats Africa, if you dont know Africa then obviously the political landscape will shock you.

Australia is meant to be a first world country that people flee their countries to live in, yet never once have I seen a politician actually agree with someone else. Never once have i seen a politician actually answer a question they have been asked. They all seem to develop boring and monotonous tones and voices when they get in to politics. Their stuttered speech and long drawn out sentences. You can tell they dont actually know what they saying and they only just hoping they dont say something silly.

That Mirabella incident is pretty dodgey. The worst part is that it almost gives some of Palmer's claims about electoral integrity some sort of foundation.

personally i would prefer mirabella lost her seat

It's the Westminster system, it's the duty of the opposition to provide an opposing view. Saying that, there are generally lots of things that pass through parliament with bi-partisan support, they just rarely get media coverage.

The last parliament was an exceptional circumstance where the opposition were particularly uncooperative but even then, things like the NDIS passed through parliament with only a little fuss (though mainly because opposing it would have been bad press for them).

:lol: when did he once mention Zim?

Ditto.

Just another reason in favour of digitising the voting process.

He didn't, but it speaks to his context. You're more cut about it than he was.


Stop the press. Did notorganic and batfink just agree on something?
Surely the first sign of the apocalypse.

The opportunity to double-vote is something that I just don't know how much they look at... yes it's very easy to go vote at multiple booths... and if you get caught they still can't remove your vote because it's anonymous... but I imagine surely they do cross-check and fine people to ensure people didn't multi-vote (the same as they check those who failed to vote) and would have records of the number of multiple voters there were and whether they may have influenced the final result...

But I don't know what the AEC actually does.

I would say on balance we agree on one in ten things. I'm not ashamed to admit when he's right, as rare as it may be.

I believe that it's possible to go to jail for multiple voting for 6-12 months on top of fines.

It would be less risky just to collect the names and addresses of mates in your electorate that really don't give a fuck about voting and cast a vote under each of their names at different voting booths around the electorate.

Not that I'm suggesting people do that, just what's possible.

Actually politicians often afree with each other and it's not uncommon for bills to pass with bipartisan support... they just don't tend to do it publicly or on big issues. Apart from the NDIS, note that Abbott initially supported the PNG solution until the party decided to attack it for "not saying what Kevin Rudd says it says."


The last opposition leader who took a genuine bipartisan approach wasn't all that long ago... it was Malcolm Turnbull. And he got axed for it. Kim Beazley was also not an overly negative opposition leader... probably explains why he never got elected.

Coalition and Australia would be a lot stronger without S Mirabella. Dirty vile woman.

While I tend to favour digital voting, the incident isn't really as dodgy as might be made out.

The vote-counters have likely separated votes into piles depending on who the first preference was... one pile of approximately 1000 votes preferencing McGowan was incorrectly recorded on the original count.

When they identified 1000 extra Senate votes than HoR votes at that booth they re-checked and identified a clerical error.



The fact that Australia's counting system is so open and that there are a number of checks and balances in place makes it highly unlikely that counting error could cause an incorrect result.

Even if thousands of votes were incorrectly counted, most seats wouldn't change because of that... and in the ones that might, closer scrutiny is applied and a re-count may always be an option.



The opportunity to double-vote is something that I just don't know how much they look at... yes it's very easy to go vote at multiple booths... and if you get caught they still can't remove your vote because it's anonymous... but I imagine surely they do cross-check and fine people to ensure people didn't multi-vote (the same as they check those who failed to vote) and would have records of the number of multiple voters there were and whether they may have influenced the final result...

But I don't know what the AEC actually does.

quite what?

I think that little questions often raise bigger questions. Digitising the process removes most of those doubts around vote tampering, and cuts down on informal voting. But at the same time you lose the physical evidence of the vote.