More than 80 unopened ballots found in SA seat won by One Nation prompts recount

One Nation’s claim to the seat of Narungga has hit a snag weeks after the South Australian election.

Uncounted ballot papers were discovered on Thursday, forcing a recount in the Yorke Peninsula seat, which One Nation’s Chantelle Thomas won by just 58 votes.

More than 80 unopened papers have turned up, the state electoral commission has confirmed, offering a sliver of hope to the defeated Liberal candidate, Tania Stock.

The commission had already done a recount on the knife-edge seat.

Every candidate has now been notified a further count will be held on Friday, “to ensure the integrity of the Narungga result”, it said.

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More than 600 uncounted ballots were in three sealed boxes returned to the commission, including 81 for Narungga.

“The result has already been declared,” deputy electoral commissioner Leah McLay said.

“The purpose of the count is for the commission to determine whether the result would have differed had those ballots been included in the initial count and the subsequent recount.”

The Labor government, under the premier, Peter Malinauskas, won the 21 March election in a landslide, but Pauline Hanson’s party outperformed the Liberal party in what was widely seen as the first real-life test of its polling surge.

Deputy premier and special minister of state, Kyam Maher, said on top of the commission’s usual election review, the government would have an independent review of the election and voters’ experiences. There have been other issues around the election including delays, understaffing, and the handling of the First Nations voice to parliament vote.

He said 81 “sealed and unopened” votes had been found at a Port Pirie early voting centre, in the neighbouring seat of Stuart.

“Elections are incredibly complex things to undertake. There are thousands of employees, hundreds of polling booths, over a million votes to count,” he said.

“We are fortunate in Australia and in SA in particular we have fair and free elections, and in SA we jealously guard how we undertake democracy.

“It is disappointing, though, when we see things go not exactly as they should.”

He said there was no suggestion of interference or tampering.

The commission is expected to seek legal advice and petition the court of disputed returns if the new count changes the election result.

“We have not investigated what the cause of the error was,” McLay said.

McLay said the SA electoral commission would support any independent external review into the 2026 state election.

Thomas was declared the winner of Narungga earlier in April over the Liberal party’s Stock after a recount due to the tight voting margin.

It gave One Nation four lower house seats, as well as three upper house seats.

Liberal leader, Ashton Hurn, told the ABC the commission had “some explaining to do”.

“If there are further votes that haven’t been accounted for, we need to understand exactly where they’re from and we need to make sure they’re counted and scrutineered in the way that’s required,” she said.