“Can it get any worse ?????”, “I started today crying at 4am — this is nuts”, “Hi again, STUART still has 4 booths unstaffed”, and “I am now literally begging you for a response to this request” are four separate messages sent by Electoral Commission of South Australia (ECSA) staff in the days leading up to the March 21 state election, according to documents obtained by the ABC via a Freedom of Information request.
The frantic communications paint a picture of an organisation in disarray, with senior staff struggling to staff polling booths even as voting was about to begin. The staffing scramble appeared particularly serious in one electorate in the western suburbs, where the returning officer emailed two senior ECSA officials on the Thursday night before the election.
“I have asked some deputies to step up as managers as I had less than half of my PBM spots allocated as at 9:00 last night,” the officer wrote. “I have one spot for a PBM as one has pulled out this afternoon. If it is at all possible to bring in [redacted], I would be eternally grateful, I know he can hit the ground running without training.”
The returning officer also warned that one polling booth “could be shut down” and that “venues have not been contacted as I have not had any names at this point.”
ECSA’s handling of the 2026 election has already been plagued by a series of problems, including technical glitches, long queues, missing ballots, payment delays, and Aboriginal voters being mistakenly turned away. An independent review into the election is underway, led by former Australian electoral commissioner Tom Rogers, who is due to hand down his findings before the end of the year.
Mr Rogers told the ABC the documents made for “distressing reading” and that he had received “a lot of evidence of those sorts of things.” He pledged to “make a full set of findings and recommendations about those issues.”
Acting SA Electoral Commissioner Leah McLay said she was “extremely concerned” to see reports of worker distress during the election period.