We have never missed voting in any election. In this case, we delivered our postal votes the Thursday prior in person to the official electoral site in the Old Beehive Building, Pall Mall, Bendigo. 

We gave the envelopes to a male official who placed them in a box behind the counter. We did not receive any verification of the delivery but we believed that our vote had been officially received. This belief was over optimistic it seems.

We have concerns about postal voting, as unlike the previous system where your vote is marked off on the electoral role, there is no hard evidence of delivery of your vote. In this case, Australia Post is not to blame. 

We are concerned that our vote was not used in the election. 

We had visited the federal electoral office in Bendigo by mistake after the receiving the notice and they reported some fifty people making the same complaint of having voted but receiving notices. 

We have other sources registering concern. We have now sent our reply to the Victorian Electoral Commission. We have no confidence of this error not happening again and will request written verification from now on. We will not pay a fine for someone else’s mistake. 

We hope that this issue is investigated and that we receive an explanation.

We would have thought that this kind of error would have been picked up by their system.

Robert Brown,

Shelbourne