South Australia's Premier is facing a renewed push to recall parliament's lower house amid concerns the pandemic may prevent thousands of people voting in next month's state election.
People in South Australia who test positive to COVID-19 must quarantine for 10 days, while close contacts must complete seven days of isolation.
Members of parliament have also raised concerns about how aged care residents will be able to cast their ballots on March 19.
Police Commissioner and State Emergency Coordinator Grant Stevens said he only recently become aware of the potential polling issues and they had not yet been discussed in any of the committees he been part of.
"It is something that we will address," he told ABC Radio Adelaide.
"I don't know what the answer is yet and when we do have an answer, people will become aware of that."
Changes to electoral regulations, which were gazetted last week, allow people under a COVID-19 direction to complete a postal vote.
However, applications for postal votes close at 5pm on March 17, two days before election day.
Legislation to reform elements of the state's electoral processes failed to pass through parliament before the lower house rose in December.
One of the changes would have been to allow phone voting in certain circumstances.
The Legislative Council returns next Tuesday for three days of sitting, but the government has so far refused to recall the House of Assembly.
"Steven Marshall shut down the Parliament for five months to avoid scrutiny and now the consequence of that will be potentially tens of thousands of people missing out on the opportunity to vote on election day," Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas said.
"We only need the lower house to sit for five minutes and the issue can be resolved."
SA Best MLC Frank Pangallo said both houses need to sit next week so the electoral issues can be addressed.
"The election is going to be extremely close, every vote is going to count – particularly in the marginal seats – so we can't have a situation where thousands of people are disenfranchised from voting," he said.
Lower House Speaker Dan Cregan also wants parliament recalled to deal with the reforms.
A letter he wrote to the Premier to do that was co-signed by a majority of MPs.
Mr Cregan said organising the poll during the pandemic was giving the Electoral Commission of South Australia (ECSA) a "real headache".
"Parliament shouldn't be adding more to [Commissioner Stevens'] plate," he said.
"He's doing the best he absolutely can.
"Parliament should be working just as hard as any other frontline worker."
But Premier Steven Marshall said he will not recall the house.
"Labor and the crossbench had plenty of opportunities to agree to this legislation beforehand," he said.
"It's unfortunate that they wanted to play games and not support the very real situation that we are now confronted with.
"Obviously this is something that the Electoral Commissioner will now have to deal with."
ABC News understands there have been high-level talks between SA Health and ECSA as recently as yesterday about how to the election can be conducted.
Chief Public Health Officer Professor Nicola Spurrier said more postal votes will be expected this year.
"We are looking at ways that we could have people that are close contacts able to vote," she said.
"It is important if there is a large number of people who are close contacts or cases that it may have an impact on the election results.
"So we will support that as much as we can from a health perspective."
December's mid-year budget review allocated an additional $1.8 million dollars to ECSA to help the organisation conduct the poll in a COVID-safe way.
Commissioner Stevens warned changing laws may only be part of the solution.
"Passing legislation is one thing, but implementing a robust process that has all the levels of accountability and security around it would be quite challenging in the time frame that's available to us between now and the election," he said.
The Electoral Commission said it was consulting with SA Health "to ensure that the public can vote as safely and easily as possible at the election".
"We are also liaising with a number of electoral commissions interstate to find out how they have safely, and successfully, conducted elections during the pandemic," ECSA said in a statement.
The commission said other COVID-safe measures included dedicated hygiene officers at every polling place and the installation of hand-sanitising stations.
