57,000 postal votes rejected amid pandemic-era surge

About 709,000 postal ballots were returned and accepted into the count, the data tabled on Monday shows. A further 100,000 who applied for a postal vote ended up voting by other means.

But Paul Williams, a senior lecturer in politics and journalism at Griffith University, said based on the raw figure alone the rejected postal ballots equated to “more than a whole seat” and was “unacceptably high”.

With a federal election looming and the pandemic shifting public reliance on postal voting, Dr Williams added it was important for all electoral bodies nationwide to ensure education was “up to scratch” for people who may be voting by mail for the first time, similar to what would be needed for a shift to online voting.

“This has to be…