2001 Australian Capital Territory general election

The 2001 campaign is perhaps best remembered for the short-lived candidacy of rugby league veteran Mal Meninga, AM. On Monday, 24 September 2001, Meninga declared his candidacy for the ACT Legislative Assembly, running for the electorate of Molonglo.[6] Moments after announcing that he would run for election, Meninga pulled out mid-sentence: "And the thing about that is, I guess, I was a public figure and I was put on the podium where I was just a person out there . . . I'm buggered, I'm sorry, I have to resign."[7] Subsequently, this incident led to the satirical Chaser team instituting the 'Mal Award' for their election television shows, presented to politicians "for the greatest act of political suicide during an election campaign".[8]

• Michael Moore (Molonglo)

Five seats were up for election. The Labor Party was defending two seats. The Liberal Party was defending two seats (although Trevor Kaine was contesting the election as a candidate for the United Canberra Party). The Paul Osborne Independent Group was defending one seat.

Five seats were up for election. The Labor Party was defending two seats. The Liberal Party was defending two seats. Independent MLA Dave Rugendyke, originally elected as an affiliate of Brindabella independent MLA Paul Osborne, was defending one seat.

Seven seats were up for election. The Labor Party was defending two seats. The Liberal Party was defending three seats. The Greens were defending one seat. One seat had been held by Independent MLA Michael Moore.

The 2001 ACT election was a major milestone in the conduct of elections in Australia with the first use of electronic voting at polling places for parliamentary elections. This election also saw the introduction of electronic counting of all ballots for the first time in the ACT.[11] Electronic voting and counting was introduced following the passing of the ACT Electoral Amendment Bill 2000 (No 2). This Bill allowed for electronic ballot papers, electronic capture of ballot information, electronic counting of ballots. Also covered were provisions allowing for the security of electronic voting and voting counting processes, handling of disputes, offences, publication of electronic voting statistics.[12]

The electronic voting system used at the 2001 election was the first of its kind to be used for a parliamentary election in Australia. The system was based on the use of standard personal computers as voting terminals, with voters using a barcode to authenticate their votes. Voting terminals were linked to a server in each polling location using a secure local area network. No votes were taken or transmitted over a public network like the internet.[11]

This was the first election which used electronic counting, which combines the counting of electronic votes and paper ballots. Votes were "captured" electronically in two ways: recorded directly by electors through the electronic voting system, and recorded by data entry operators who entered electors' preferences marked on paper ballots into a computer system. This data-entry method of converting handwritten ballot papers into computer-readable data was not an ACT first – similar systems have been used for recent elections for the Australian Senate and the upper houses in New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia. However, adapting this system to the Robson Rotation method of printing variations of the ballot papers was an ACT innovation, used for the first time in Australia at the 2001 election.[11]

A total of 16,559 electronic votes were recorded at four pre-poll centres across the Territory. On polling day, another four voting centres were equipped with electronic voting facilities. The proportion of electronic votes in relation to all votes counted increased was 8.3 per cent. The ACT Electoral Commission claims that interim results for 16,559 votes using the electronic voting system were available through the Commission's website by 7:15pm, 75 minutes after the close of polls on polling night.[11] In a review of the electronic voting and counting system, following the 2001 election, the Commission recommended an expansion of the system for the 2004 ACT general election.[11]

Following the announcement of the election result in 2001, Harold Hird, a Liberal Party candidate in the electorate of Ginninderra, sought a recount of the votes in that electorate. Hird was 55 votes behind fellow Liberal Party candidate, Vicki Dunne, at the point at which one of the two candidates had to be excluded. Hird's request for a recount was rejected by both the Electoral Commissioner and, on appeal, the full Commission. In considering the request, the Commissioner and the full Commission had regard to the level of accuracy achieved by the data entry of paper ballots and the computer count. The Commission was satisfied that the level of accuracy was so high that a recount in any form could not have improved on the accuracy of the original count, and that there was no probability that the original count had indicated that the wrong candidates had been elected, given the margins between the winning and losing candidates.[11]