Electoral officials insist the counting of votes from the weekend federal election is proceeding in a progressive and orderly way.
In other words, grindingly slow.
After eight hours of counting on Tuesday we're no closer to knowing the outcome in any of the nine seats too close to call, let alone which of the two parties won the election.
With up to three million votes to be counted across the country between now and Friday week, the coalition believes it has 69 lower seats in the bag - seven short of a majority - Labor 67, the Greens one and independents four.
In the South Australian seat of Grey, which could make or break a majority for the coalition, preferences have been distributed in only seven of the 124 polling booths.
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Nick Xenophon Team candidate Andrea Broadfoot leads sitting Liberal MP Rowan Ramsey by 697 votes.
But the ABC's Australia Votes website is projecting a clear-cut victory for Mr Ramsey, which along with likely wins in Chisholm, Dunkley, Forde and Gilmore would give the coalition 74 seats.
It would then need two of the remaining four doubtful seats - Capricornia, Cowan, Herbert and Hindmarsh - to reach majority government.
The commission blames the slow count on the laws that govern elections and date back to 1918.
Its focus was on integrity and the one-person-one-vote principle, the AEC said in a statement.
That means determining whether each person is entitled to a postal vote before taking the ballot papers out of each envelope and then conducting the count in batches of between 1000 and 2000.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the long count was not unprecedented.
"I know many Australians find this sort of frustrating, the wait, and you can imagine that we are among them," he told reporters in Sydney.
"I'd be amazed if it wasn't resolved within a week."
