Elsie Adamo
QUESTIONS remain for how Mount Gambier residents stuck in quarantine will vote on election day.
As it currently stands, voters can apply for a postal vote with the Electoral Commission accepting applications until March 17, two days before the election.
It is unclear how voters who learn of a Covid-19 infection or close contact status after this date would be able to vote.
With a history of close results, the votes of a few in Mount Gambier can sway an election.
As of Wednesday, 211 people in Mount Gambier were classed by SA Health as being active cases of Covid-19.
This does not include anyone currently in mandatory isolation due to being a close contact.
If 211 people did not vote in the State elections in Mount Gambier in either 1997 or 2010, it may have changed the outcome of the election.
Former Mount Gambier MP Don Pegler won his seat by 161 votes in 2010, a number lower than the amount of people in the electorate currently stuck in home isolation.
He is stressing the importance of every vote counting in an election.
“All those people who may not be able to vote, should have the opportunity to vote someway,” Mr Pegler said.
“It is one of the important things in democracy that everyone who has the right to vote, does vote.”
Mr Pegler said there are other alternatives to phone voting, but any system needed to be secure.
“There should be a system if somebody is in lockdown, they should be able to put their vote in an envelope and an officer from the electoral commission pick that up,” he said.
“It has to have the right rules in place so people cannot cheat or vote twice, but all that can be done.”
A proposed Electoral (Assisted Voting) Bill 2022 that would allow South Australians in quarantine on election day to vote over the phone could not be passed due to the lower house not being recalled to vote on the matter.
A majority of South Australian MPs gathered this week in protest at parliament house, in an attempt to convince Premier Stephen Marshall to recall parliament to no avail.
The current MP for Mount Gambier Independent Troy Bell said phone voting legislation was in the public interest.
“People should not be denied the right to vote due to party politics over the pandemic and a police commissioner should never have the powers to exclude people from their democratic right to vote,” Mr Bell said.
“The Bill just expands the current process which is already used for vision impaired people, who are able to vote by telephone, so the mechanisms are already in place.
“Even South Australians working in Antarctica can vote by telephone so why shouldn’t people forced into isolation have the same right?”
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