Narelle Miragliotta and Sarah Murray

In January 2022, the NSW Electoral Commission (NSWEC) petitioned the NSW Supreme Court to void the outcome in three local council elections held on December 4 the previous year. The basis for the petition was not one of the more familiar triggers. As the counsel for one of the defendants in the case observed: ‘This is not a case where there was rampant widespread voter fraud, or lost ballot boxes, or ballot stuffing. There were no riots [or] outbreak of warfare that suspended an election’. The problem in this instance was a system capacity issue. The basis of the petition launched by the NSWEC was a ‘defect or irregularity’ in the electronic iVote system.