The NSW Electoral Commission has announced the iVote system used during the 2021 local government elections will not be available for the upcoming by-elections.
A spokesperson said that decision is due to performance issues during the December council elections.
"The Electoral Commission must undertake a comprehensive review and analysis of the root cause [or causes] of the problem," a statement said.
Statement: Unavailability of iVote for State and Local government by-elections
To mitigate the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NSW Electoral Commission was authorised to provide internet voting for the first time for the December 2021 state-wide ordinary local government elections. Before it can be used again for any NSW elections the iVote system requires extensive reconfiguration and testing. These steps are essential to ensure the system can operate effectively and with integrity under the rules that apply to voting for State and local government elections. In particular, it is critical that integration testing with the Electoral Commission’s other systems (such as its systems for election management, and ballot counting and results) be undertaken. Integration testing requires the close collaboration of a number of teams at the Electoral Commission to plan and execute. The Electoral Commission is only funded, however, to retain a small team of specialist resources to deliver iVote. There is no backup support available for these specialist capabilities that would enable iVote to be offered at State or local government by-elections in the near future, while also preparing the system for use at the 2023 State general election. The risks arising for the Electoral Commission from these resource constraints and its aging election systems are exacerbated at the present time by:
- ongoing work health and safety responsibilities to manage staff who have only recently delivered the December local government elections, after two previous deferrals requiring major replanning through significant periods of lock-down, and
- COVID-19, which is affecting the availability of Electoral Commission staff and impacting its supply chains adversely.
As has previously been reported, due to performance issues with the iVote system on local government election day (4 December 2021) a number of electors who successfully registered for iVote did not receive their security credentials and were not able to cast a vote using iVote. Following detailed analysis and simulation of the potential impact of the issues on the election outcomes, the Electoral Commissioner has initiated proceedings in the NSW Supreme Court seeking a declaration about the validity of the results in three councillor elections. In parallel to managing these court proceedings the Electoral Commission must also undertake a comprehensive review and analysis of the root cause/s of the problem with the iVote system experienced on 4 December.
Finalising the Supreme Court proceedings, completing the iVote system review, and implementing any remediations and improvements, are critical to ensuring the problems that occurred at the December local government elections do not occur again.
In light of the above, the Electoral Commissioner is of the view that it is neither feasible nor appropriate to approve the use of iVote again until those actions are completed.
Released 17 January 2022
