Premier hits out at tech troubles

PREMIER Annastacia Palaszczuk has blasted the Electoral Commission of Queensland, claiming “they’ve got one job” after technical issues meant results were published painfully slowly.

There were limited online updates for several councils and the Currumbin by-election when counting started at 6pm on Saturday.

“I’m disappointed frankly, I mean they’ve got one job and their job is to make sure that they can actually run an election so I’ll be ordering a review of that as to why it happened,” the Premier said yesterday.

“I understand there was technical issues with the computer system, I’ll get a full brief from the Attorney (General) but there will be a full review.”

The ECQ declined to comment on Ms Palaszczuk’s criticism, instead referring to a statement it released online.

“Due to a technical issue with the data feed from polling booths to the ECQ’s results website, the publication of the preliminary count results was delayed,” it said yesterday.

“This did not affect the count process itself or the recording of results. The ECQ worked immediately to address the issues with the data feed, with all results from the preliminary count published on the website by 11.45pm.”

More than 750,000 people headed to the polling booths on Saturday to cast their vote.

Along with about 1.8 million people who had pre-polled, voted over the phone or applied for a postal vote, it meant total turnout was on track to be over 75 per cent. There was an 83 per cent turnout at the 2016 elections. Returning Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said he believed fines for those who did not vote should be waived.