Frosty fingers in polar polling

Transcript for World News Australia Radio

As Thea Cowie explains it takes a combination of telephone, internet and old-fashioned shipping services for their votes to be collected.

It's minus 60 degrees outside and the skeleton crew weathering the long, dark Antarctic winter have plenty of time to ponder their vote.

The Australian Electoral Commission's Greg Richardson says polling in the Antarctic is unique.

"For a start we email the ballot papers to them which is something that's not done anywhere else. They vote down there and then those votes are transcribed as they come back by a staff member with another staff member present back in Hobart and they call those results through to us, ballot paper by ballot paper."

This year, 39 Australian scientists and support staff are registered as Antarctic voters.

Their ballot papers were emailed out last week but their votes won't officially be recorded until Sunday.

Not surprisingly, a disproportionately high number of Antarctic voters take the time to vote "below the line" on their Senate ballot papers.

This year, that means putting each candidate in order from one all the way through to 110, at least for the voters from electorates in New South Wales.

There won't be sausage sizzles or lamingtons available in the voting queues in Antarctica, but Tasmania AEC operations manager Greg Richardson says the voters make their own fun.

"They tend to throw voting parties so basically they get everybody in so they can all do it in one go and that allows the volunteer returning officers who are appointed down there to basically get the whole crew together, get the voting done and then have the results ready to phone in at their appointed time. So they come together and it's like an occasion for them. You've got to remember, it's mid-winter and it's been pretty cold."

There are two volunteer returning officers at each of the four Australian Antarctic bases of Casey, Davis, Mawson and Macquarie Island.

Their job on Sunday morning will be to make a very important phone call to the Australian Electoral Commission and describe every last mark on every last ballot paper.

Mr Richardson says AEC officers in Hobart will be prompting them.

"For the Senate paper for instance 'Is there any marks above the line?' and they might say 'well in box D we've got a one' and then 'is there any marks below the line?' and they may have well have marked all below the line as well so they go through that. And then we say 'are there any other marks on the ballot paper?' and we're to record those if they're there."

Reporter: "So any artistic endeavours...?"

"Yes, I think if there was a picture of a donkey or something we might just write 'picture of donkey on the right hand side' on the ballot paper because I don't think we're that artistic but we need to as faithfully reproduce them as possible."

The votes of Australians in Antarctica will be added to the official count as they're phoned through on Sunday morning.

But the AEC expects to wait until late October for the original ballots to come back on the first available voyage.

It will be a matter of waiting for the ice to thaw.