THE Victorian Electoral Commission has now gone two whole days, 48 hours, without publishing a vote-counting update in the second-closest contest in the state, for the seat of Bass.
Surely, if the seat of Bass was needed to decide government, they’d have moved heaven and earth to get a result in the seat sooner? Not so.
“We are in the process of conducting rechecks in Bass District and reconciling material that was received back to the election office after election night,” they said today.
The VEC also expects to “complete vote exchange” of primary votes from other booths and are continuing to receive the final postal votes but so far, this hasn’t resulted in additional votes being added to the candidates’ tally.
As of 11.30am Wednesday, November 30 the Labor candidate and Bass incumbent, Jordan Crugnale leads the count by 233 votes from the Liberals’ Aaron Brown still with as many as 6000 votes still to arrive and be counted.
Only the electorate of Pakenham is closer where the Liberals’ David Farrelly leads the count by five votes.
There are three other close contests out of the 88 Lower House seats including Hastings where Strictly Ballroom star Paul Mercurio has stretched his lead to 659 and looks likely to hand over his dancing pumps for a seat in the 60th Victorian Parliament.
Chris Crewther of the Liberals leads in Mornington by 383 votes.
If the counting continues like this in the final five seats in doubt, Labor will be returned with 55 seats the same number they had last time, confirming the statement in Federal Parliament by Russell Broadbent this week that his own party didn’t just lose, they were “smashed”.
