Electoral Legislation Amendment (Assurance of Senate Counting) 2021

✦ Plain-English Summary

# Electoral Legislation Amendment (Assurance of Senate Counting) 2021

## What it does
This bill requires the Australian Electoral Commission to hire independent security experts (accredited by the Australian Signals Directorate) to check that the computer systems used to count Senate votes are safe from hacking and tampering. After the security check is done, the assessor must write a report with findings and recommendations to the Electoral Commissioner before each Senate election.

## Why it matters
Senate elections directly affect which laws get passed in Parliament, so ensuring the vote-counting process is genuinely secure builds public confidence that results are legitimate. This is a practical step to verify the technology actually works as intended, rather than just assuming it does.

## Key details
- **Who does the work**: Independent assessors approved by Australia's cybersecurity agency (ASD), not the Electoral Commission itself
- **When it starts**: Most rules kick in immediately after the bill passes; some technical amendments don't take effect until 1 January 2023
- **What triggers it**: A security check must happen before the *next* Senate election that uses these computer systems—so this applies to future elections, not past ones

Official Description

Amends the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to: respond to a recommendation of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters' Report on the conduct of the 2016 federal election and matters related thereto by requiring the Electoral Commissioner to implement certain processes to assure the security and accuracy of the computer systems (including the systems for scanning ballot papers and counting votes) used to scrutinise votes for a Senate election; clarify the process for resolving candidate ties; clarify that the 'bulk exclusion' process is not required to be used in the computerised scrutiny process; allow a scrutineer to request access to an original ballot paper to resolve a question about formality or a preference vote being counted in the scrutiny of a Senate election; and require the Electoral Commissioner to publish Senate election data for each formal ballot case in the election within 7 days of the return of the writ for a Senate election.

Committee Referrals

Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills

Full bill PDF →APH page →

Audit History

Introduced

28 Oct 2021

Last updated on APH

10 Apr 2026

Outcome date

13 Dec 2021

Last checked by Crossbench

2 days ago

Full text indexed

2 days ago

🗳️

No formal division recorded

This bill passed by voice vote — parliament agreed without calling a formal count. A division is only recorded when a member explicitly requests one.

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