CANBERRA, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) said it needs funds for a complete overhaul of its software systems that run elections.
The recent Federal election, held in July, was marred by slow final results and the incidence of fraud, where 18,000 Australians were found to have voted multiple times in the election.
In a submission to a Senate inquiry into the running of the Federal election, the AEC said it had successfully conducted the July poll despite major changes to the Senate voting system.
The AEC acknowledged there were issues with the length of queues in a number of polling places Australia-wide, but that electronic polling management would improve productivity and reduce the instances of multiple voting.
Tom Rogers, the electoral commissioner at the AEC, said current information technology (IT) systems being used by the AEC were "at the end of their useful life."
"The IT systems, which have been built over a long period of time, are not able to be easily integrated with contemporary mobile platforms and in many cases, will not be supported by vendors in the future," Rogers said in the AEC's written submission.
Both major Australian political parties, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and Liberal National Party (LNP), expressed concerns to the Senate committee over how the election was run.
The Queensland (QLD) division of the LNP said in its submission that a number of voters were unable to cast a postal vote in time for the election and the number of time it took to finalize results in a number of seats was unacceptable.
The ALP suggested that more resources should be allocated for counting votes in seats where the result was close.
Antony Green, an election analyst, suggested in a submission that limited electronic voting be introduced to replace postal voting to ease the problems associated with voting overseas.
The AEC announced in October that more than 18,000 Australians were under investigation for voting twice in the election, including 59 people who voted three or more times and two people who voted 11 times each.
