Skip to contentInformation for people with disabilityInformation on accessibility
Australian Electoral Commission
By the end of today, 34 of the 151 House of Representatives seats will have had their result officially declared by an AEC divisional returning officer.
Another 12 results are expected to be officially declared on Monday 3 June 2019.
Today also marks the final day that the AEC legally must wait for postal votes to be received and added into counting. Usually, relatively small numbers are received by this stage, and each returning officer mixes the ballots into other postal votes deliberately held back to ensure the overall secrecy of the vote.
Each federal election there are a number of House of Representatives seats (29 at the 2016 federal election) where a full distribution of preferences must be undertaken for the AEC to determine the final margin between the two leading candidates, and to be able to lawfully and officially declare a result.
A full distribution of preferences can occur only once tonight’s deadline for the receipt of postal votes has passed.
It is expected that a full distribution of preferences will be required for a range of seats in order for the AEC to officially declare those results. This process, involving a further count of all formal votes cast in a seat(s), will take a number of days and, therefore, some seat declarations will take longer than others.
The closest remaining seat in the 2019 federal election, the Division of Macquarie (NSW), will conduct final postal and declaration counts on Monday before proceeding to a final distribution of preferences, which will also serve to confirm the final margin of votes between the first- and second-placed candidates. Scrutineers may attend both counts.
The process of scanning Senate ballot papers, then manually re-entering and verifying more than 100 million preferences, continues in key Senate scrutiny centres over this weekend.
Every formal Senate vote for an individual state or territory must be verified, and in the AEC’s computer systems, before a distribution of preferences can occur in the presence of scrutineers.
Smaller jurisdictions are likely to be in a position to finalise their counts and conduct the distribution of preferences earlier than larger states.
The AEC acknowledges the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to land, waters, culture and community. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
AEC Twitter account