ACT LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY ELECTION – SCANNING OF BALLOT
PAPERS
Overview
Elections ACT scans all paper ballots to ascertain voter preferences on
their bal ot papers for the ACT Legislative Assembly election. This
occurs in the week following Election Day. In the scanning process, all
ballot papers are examined by the scanning system according to
established business rules relating to formality. All ballot papers are
also manually verified, and any discrepancies are identified in
potentially three phases of verification involving different casual staff
and/or senior electoral officials prior to determining their final
formality. Preference data obtained from the scanning system is then
uploaded to Elections ACT electronic voting and counting system to be
included in the final election results.
PHASE
DESCRIPTION
NUMBER OF BALLOTS
Verification Phase 1
All ballot papers are manually checked after 77,885
the ICR (intelligent character recognition –
handwriting) conversion of each ballot
paper.
Individual digits are presented to the
operators for fast checking.
All ballot papers that fail the business rules
are sent to the Verification Phase 2 queue
for ACT Supervisor operators for further
checking.
Verification Phase 2
Preferences are checked in the context of
3,126
the whole bal ot paper image.
ACT Supervisors are presented with bal ots
that do not meet the business rules.
e.g. missing preferences, missing sequence,
duplicate preferences, etc
Note: ACT Supervisors are not the same
operators as the Verification Phase 1
operators. The system will not allow
operators from Phase 1 to verify ballots that
are sent to this job queue.
Of the 3,126 ballots papers, 944 ballots were
corrected.
Any bal ots that do not meet the business
rules or have been changed by the operator
at V2 remain as unverified and are sent to
Verification Phase 3 queue for ACT senior
election officers to make a final decision.
Data-Driven Communications – IVE Group
Verification Phase 3 Ballot papers reviewed at V3.
2,182
ACT Senior Election Officers to make a final
decision on written preferences.
Note: ACT Senior Election Officers are not the
same operators as the Verification Phase 1 &
Phase 2 operators.
The system does not al ow operators from
Phase 1 & Phase 2 access to the V3 portal.
Data-Driven Communications – IVE Group
Document Outline
