A micro-party that is gunning for the final spot in the NSW upper house is likely to mount a legal challenge if it loses, potentially sending voters back to the ballot box. The Animal Justice Party is battling it out with the No Land Tax Party, and the three major parties, for the last of 21 upper house seats being contested at Saturday’s election. However an early hiccup with the state’s electronic voting system, iVote, saw AJP and another party left off the “above the line” section of the ballot paper. About 19,000 votes were cast before iVote was suspended and the problem, which was due to human error, was fixed.
The Animal Justice Party lead candidate Mark Pearson told Fairfax Media on Monday that his party was “neck and neck” with the Liberal and No Land Tax parties for the remaining spot and preference flows “could get us over the line”. But he said the iVote error meant “we were not above the line for 36 hours”.
“Most people do vote above the line and there’s a measurable percentage of those people who really don’t make up their mind until they go in and have a look [at the ballot paper],” Mr Pearson said.
Should the party not secure a spot “we’d seriously have to look at whether we go to the Supreme Court … to ask a judge to look at the issue and whether this election will be declared void”, he said.
Full Article: NSW state election 2015: Legal challenge looms over upper house iVote error.