One the polls close at 6pm tonight, the counting gets started straight away. Thousands of people are involved in counting the votes – here’s how its done.
Election Night: The First Step
At 6pm on election night, polling places close, and the counting begins. AEC officials open the ballot boxes for the House of Representatives and unfold each paper. They check whether each ballot is formal (filled out correctly) or informal (filled out incorrectly). Informal votes are set aside and counted separately.
The first thing the AEC counts are the first preference votes—the number ‘1’ marked on each ballot paper. These are sorted into piles for each candidate and counted.
A similar count happens at central AEC locations for early votes. This means a significant number of votes are tallied on election night, but not all.
Next, officials conduct a Two-Candidate-Preferred (TCP) count. This involves sorting every formal ballot paper into the pile of one of the two leading candidates—whoever each voter has ranked higher. This helps give the public an early indication of who is likely to win each seat. Importantly, all of this is done in full view of party-appointed scrutineers and the results are published live on the AEC website.
How preferences are counted
By numbering your preferences you are basically saying “If my number 1 candidate doesn’t win, I want my vote to go to my number 2. If 1 and 2 are unsuccessful, I want my vote to go to number 3.” And so on, for however many candidates there are on the ballot paper.
And that’s exactly how it gets counted. The votes get put into stacks for each candidate, and they add up how many are in each stack. The candidate with the fewest votes is excluded. As each candidate is knocked out, each vote from their stack is redirected towards whomever that voter numbered next in their sequence. The votes are tallied again, the one with the lowest number of votes is excluded again, and their votes redistributed.
However, so that this count can happen in all of the different booths simultaneously, the AEC tries to figure out who are the two leading candidates in each electorate. These two names are in a sealed envelope which is only opened by AEC staff after the initial count of votes is done. The team at each booth then does the ‘indicative preference count’ or ‘two candidate preferred’ count for those two names, so that the likely two candidate preferred count can be reported quickly.
From time to time, those two names are not the two most voted for candidates, and the two candidate preferred count needs to be redone, which usually happens a day or two later. The full preference count happens in the next step.
See more information in our full explainer on preferential voting.
What Happens After Election Night?
Election night is only the halfway point. Over the following days and weeks, the AEC continues the process with several important steps.
Declaration Votes
Many Australians vote away from their local area—these are called declaration votes (like postal and pre-poll votes). These must be securely packaged and transported to the correct AEC centre. Once there, each vote is checked against the electoral roll to make sure it’s valid before it is counted.
Postal Votes
Hundreds of thousands of postal votes arrive at counting centres every day. Like declaration votes, they must be receipted and verified before they’re included in the count.
Senate Votes
The millions of Senate votes are also transported to secure locations for counting. Every Senate ballot paper, and every preference marked by a voter, is manually keyed in and checked by a human operator – with party-appointed scrutineers able to observe this process.
Once the millions of preferences marked on Senate ballot papers are manually entered and verified by AEC staff, the task of distributing those preferences is necessarily performed by AEC created and owned, and independently certified, software. This method of distributing Senate preferences allows Senators to be elected in time to take their seats in Parliament and has been successfully applied for previous federal elections. Each election, detailed reports of the Senate distribution of preferences are made publicly available for further manual scrutiny, both internal and external, confirming the accuracy of the process undertaken.
The Fresh Scrutiny: Double-Checking Everything
From the Tuesday after election night, the AEC carries out a fresh scrutiny, which is a mandatory recount of every House of Representatives vote. This ensures accuracy and confirms that the indicative results from election night were correct.
During this stage, the AEC also performs the full distribution of preferences. This happens in every seat—even if someone already got over 50% of the first preferences. This complete process is used to calculate final statistics, including the Two-Party-Preferred (TPP) vote—used to show the preference flows between Labor and Coalition, even in seats where those two aren’t the final candidates.
If the final two candidates are not Labor and Coalition, a scrutiny for information is carried out to estimate what the TPP result would have been.
Who Wins?
To win a seat in the House of Representatives, a candidate must receive more than 50% of the formal votes. If no one does on first preferences, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. Their votes are redistributed based on voters’ second preferences. This process continues until one candidate crosses the 50% line.
The AEC cannot officially declare a winner until:
- All votes have been received and counted.
- The result is mathematically certain.
- The fresh scrutiny is complete.
Once those conditions are met, the AEC publicly announces the result in a declaration of the poll, and the winner’s name is returned to the Governor-General on a document called the writ.
Why the Count Takes Time
Counting millions of votes isn’t just about speed—it’s about getting it right. The AEC follows the principle of “right, not rushed,” which means that accuracy and transparency are more important than speed. So while it might seem like things slow down after election night, there’s a lot happening behind the scenes to ensure every vote counts.
It usually takes two weeks before the count to be finalised, but a winner in each seat, and which party won the election, is usually clear well before then.
Follow all the New England Times coverage of the federal election here or have your say on Engage
See more about the race in New England here
See more about the race in Parkes here