00:01The Electoral Commission says it's found ballots including 77 unopened absent ordinary ballot
00:08papers as well as four declaration papers which had been returned to the neighbouring seat of
00:13Stewart. That's prompted the Electoral Commission to order a recount tomorrow in the seat of Narunga
00:20which encompasses South Australia's entire York Peninsula. Following the March 21 state election
00:26a razor-thin margin in voting forced a recount to take place in the seat of Narunga then and earlier
00:33this month the Electoral Commission declared that One Nation's Chantal Thomas had won the seat
00:38over the Liberal candidate Tanya Stock by a margin of just 58 votes which handed One Nation its fourth
00:46seat in SA's lower house. The acting Electoral Commissioner Leah McClay says she'll be
00:52overseeing this subsequent recount when it gets underway tomorrow. Take a listen.
00:57Let me be clear. The result has already been declared. The purpose of the count is for the
01:05Commission to determine whether the result would have differed had those ballots been included in
01:10the initial count and subsequent recount. Leah McClay also said she'd contacted all candidates
01:16to notify them of this recount. However the Liberal candidate Tanya Stock said she had not been contacted
01:23by EXA or made aware of its statement when it was contacted by the ABC earlier today. Now with just
01:3081
01:30votes on the line it seems unlikely that the result in Narunga will change but EXA says the recount is
01:37being
01:37undertaken to ensure the integrity of the result and says if that was to change it would then seek legal
01:43advice. The Electoral Commission has faced criticism over how the March 21 poll was run including issues
01:50around understaffing as well as delays caused by difficulties logging into the electronic electoral
01:56roll system. EXA says it's now going to be investigating the cause of this error and how these extra votes
02:04weren't counted in the Narunga seat and says it also anticipates that an external independent review
02:10will be carried out into how the state election was run.
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