Achievement - Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly Elections
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- 2008 Legislative Assembly Election
- 2006 Casual Vacancy
- 2004 Legislative Assembly Election
- 2003 Casual Vacancy
- 2001 Legislative Assembly Election
eVACS® was first used in 2001 for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Legislative Assembly Election, then in 2003 for a subsequent Casual Vacancy arising from the resignation of a member, and again for the Assembly Election in 2004. Highlights are
- The ACT has a complex multi-member proportional election system following the Hare-Clark rules. Electorates have either 5 or 7 members.
- Twelve languages – Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, English, Greek, Italian, Persian, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese were used with e-voting.
- In 2001 a stand-alone demonstration PC was set up at polling centres for people to try eVACS® before voting. Voters found eVACS® so simple that the demonstration PCs were found not to be necessary and thus not used in 2004.
- Even with a complex preferential election, up to 80,000 electronic votes per electorate were counted and the results displayed within 30 seconds.
After the 2001 election the ACT Electoral Commission considered the use of electronic voting and electronic counting via eVACS® “was a success and a valuable improvement on democratic processes in the ACT” and recommended that the counting system of eVACS® “be made standard practice at ACT elections” and the voting system of eVACS® “be continued at the 2004 election.”
In 2005 the Commissioner wrote that the enhanced eVACS® “led to an even more successful use of electronic voting at the 2004 election. In particular, the process of setting up eVACS® and commissioning it for the election was streamlined, which led to an earlier start to voting and a higher number of votes taken.”
For the ACT Legislative Assembly election in 2008, scanning of ballot papers was used to identify preferences shown on every formal paper ballot. Once all scanned ballot papers were verified, the preference data was transferred to eVACS® for counting with the electronic votes.
For more information on the use of eVACS® in the ACT see eVACS® and ACT Legislative Assembly Elections
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