Regional poll workers have said understaffing and last-minute training put voting booths under stress in Saturday's federal election.
They said it was further exacerbated by a lack of Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) job advertising and the timing of the election with farmers' seeding schedules.
Three days before the election, the AEC published a list of 76 regional polling places in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland at risk of closing due to staff shortages.
That list included Nyabing in WA's Great Southern region, where two of the four staff were hired at the last minute. The site was intended to have six polling staff.
"The workload was a lot more [than previous elections]," issuing officer Jill Kent said.
"We all did a 14-and-a-half-hour day. The supervisor worked longer because he had to take the votes to Katanning [60 kilometres away]."
She said Nyabing, which has a population of about 30, was barely equipped to deal with voters pouring in from other polling sites.
"We had a lot of people from outside our area — from Katanning, from Gnowangerup and Dumbleyung," Ms Kent said.
An AEC spokesperson declined to be interviewed, saying, "While there was understaffing at some of our polling booths around the region, every planned polling place was open on election day, and the voting process ran smoothly for the overwhelming majority of voters".
Farming regions under pressure
Zali Spencer volunteered as a poll worker in Wagin, 150km away from her home in Frankland.
Wagin was not listed by the AEC as understaffed but was nonetheless urgently seeking workers shortly before polls opened on Saturday morning.
"Some people weren't trained until the night before [the election] because they were people we'd had to bring in the day before," Ms Spencer said.
She said the election coinciding with the crucial seeding period on local farms might have contributed to the worker shortage.
"I think the time of year is very difficult in those smaller towns because they are farming-based," Ms Spencer said.
AEC electoral commissioner Tom Rogers said in an announcement three days before the election that labour shortages in regional areas had been "well documented".
More advertising needed attract staff
Ms Kent said there was more the AEC could do to ensure its polling sites were adequately staffed for future elections.
"I think they should do a lot more advertising and maybe increase wages a bit," she said.
Ms Spencer said university students could be brought on to help with the effort.
"It's just advertising it, really. I was the youngest there by a fair few years," she said.
"You've got a lot of older individuals working at those places, so [COVID is] a lot scarier for them."
