The recount for the seat of Fremantle has officially concluded, 12 days after the state election took place.
The WA Electoral Commision has received backlash for the way the election was conducted on the day.
On the day of the election, voting booths across WA experienced multitudes of errors, including long queues and ballot shortages.
WA Greens Party leader Dr Bradley Pettitt says there needs to be an investigation.
“It did seem to be an election that was poorly run,” he says.
“We saw very long queues, key pieces of training not being done or not being done well.”
For the first time in WA election history, the Labor party outsourced the running of the election to a third party; a move Dr Pettitt says contributed to the issues faced on the day.
“The semi-privatisation of past electoral process, that does raise serious questions and I think that should be part of the review.”
Many politicians, including Dr Pettitt, Fremantle independent candidate Kate Hulett, and Nationals leader Shane Love, have signed a joint letter calling for an investigation on the way the election was run.
The WAEC had to change voting from the two-party preference system, between the Greens and WA Labor, to a two-party preference between Kate Hulett as an independent candidate, and WA Labor.
“They did the two-party-preferred between Labor and Greens, so they distributed the ballots that way,” Kate Hulett says.
“They then realised I had more first preferences than the Greens, so then they had to redo it as the two-party preferred me as an Independent verses Labor.”
After every election a recount is called for precautionary purposes, but Ms Hulett says the issues on March 8 could change the future of the voting system.
“It’s important that we don’t let this happen again, it has to be very tightly run and treated with the respect that it deserves,” she says.
“It’s culminated in this day which was full or failures and mistakes and problems,” Ms Hulett says.
“It happens every four years on the same weekend in March and to have these failures in logistics and administration, it feels like a real shame and is a big failure.”
Kate Hulett
“This is the first year the actual running of the election was outsourced and it was, up until [election day], really problematic.”
Dr Pettitt says these problems need to be fixed.
“There’s real danger that if we don’t learn from the mistakes that are made and make sure these mistakes aren’t repeated that trust will be eroded,” he says.
“It’s really important you know the democracy and the ability to vote is really important to us as Australians and in WA,” Ms Hulett says.