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The NSW Election Commission stated that residents who were unable to vote in the New South Wales local government elections due to website errors will not comment on local issues, but do not have to pay a $55 fine for failing to vote.
iVote is an electronic system for low-vision voters, voters who live 20 kilometers away from polling stations, silent voters, and people who are not in their parliamentary area on election day, who are troubled by technical issues on Saturday.
On Saturday, residents lined up at the Surrey Hills Library to vote in person. Credit: Brooke Mitchell
The website cannot be accessed in the morning and the error message "System update is in progress" is given. When it returned, some voters waited several hours to receive the codes they needed to register to vote online.
By the end of the voting at 6 pm, the town of Robert, a resident of Balgo, was still waiting. The 46-year-old Mr. Town and his partner registered on the website at approximately 10:30 am and 11:16 am-before the 1 pm deadline.
As time passed, he tried to vote by phone, but was told that he could not vote, and started asking the NSW Election Commission for more information on Twitter.
"They released it with certainty. They would let everyone release their code after one o'clock, and then they would not have any updates," Mr. Town said.
An error message greeted voters on the website read: "iVote is currently receiving a large number of applications. Please try again later."
In a statement to the Herald, the Election Commission stated that it “knows that some iVote users cannot access the system to vote today”.
"This is due to the increase in the number of people using the iVote system," a spokesperson said. "Any qualified voter who applied for iVote today but missed the vote will be exempt from paying any fines.
"The election commissioner can also decide after the election that other categories of voters should be exempted for good reasons."
If no justification is provided, failure to vote in a local government election will be fined $55.
The committee pointed out that "the number of voters using iVote in these elections is almost three times that of any previous election."
"We apologize to any voters who were unable to access the system due to these issues. The legislation requires that a full report on the conduct of the election be published on our website by May 2022."
Mr. Town said that the exemption of the $55 fine was “all well”, but he had some controversial issues in the Wollondilly council and he wanted to hear his voice.
"This is a very important election, and there are many new independents running for it," he said.
"This election has the opportunity to change some of the parliamentarians who have been working there for 26 years.
"It is good to be exempted from the $55 fine, but it is unfortunate that our voices cannot be heard regarding the mandatory voting matter."
Mr Town said that compared to Sydney’s larger municipal district, his area has a smaller population, which also means that “here, every vote may be more important”.
This year—partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic—is the first time iVote has been used in local government elections. It was previously used in state elections and used iVote to cast 234,401 votes in the 2019 state ballot.
When the application deadline was at 1 pm on Saturday, 652,983 local government votes had been cast using the online voting system opened on November 22. It is not clear how many voters have been prevented from voting.
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