Three Riverland booths likely to be closed on election day

THREE Riverland polling places are set to be closed on Federal Election day, due to a shortage of Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) staff.

The small Lyrup, Swan Reach and Ramco booths are among a list of sites named by the AEC unlikely to be open this Saturday.

“Recruitment difficulty is exactly what we advised could occur, both earlier in the pandemic and in the early stages of the election period, and why we’ve been urging people to assess all voting options,” said AEC Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers.

“Current labour shortages in regional areas have been well documented. No frontline service has been immune to resourcing difficulties and we’re running the nation’s biggest in-person, manual event.”

Direct liaison, advertising and third-party outreach has been happening for more than a year in an effort to recruit the 105,000 polling staff required across Australia.

“We estimate that our staff have made well over 1 million phone calls, they’ve sent more than half a million emails and we’ve had 1.8 million unique page views on our election jobs webpages since February,” Mr Rogers said.

“Short of handing out blank cheques for work, or accommodating thousands of single-day workers in interstate locations, there is not much more we could have done so far.”

People unvaccinated against Covid-19 are not permitted to work for the AEC in any capacity.