Foolestroupe, that's one of the reasons each polling booth has scrutineers during the counting; you wouldn't want anyone filling in the blank ones during a close contest, would you!?

Re: >i>we have 'compulsory attendance at a polling booth' (or substitution, such as postal voting, absent voting, etc), perhaps a couple of terms could be defined to help the nonOz readers.

Postal votes are generally available for those who know, ahead of polling day (always a Saturday in Oz, so all workers can attend) that they will be away from a polling booth on polling day.

Absentee votes are cast on polling day when you attend a polling booth outside the area of the seat in which you are enrolled. Most electorates also have a booth, open for a week ahead of polling day, at which you can cast your vote ahead of polling day.

Donkey votes are those ballot papers where the numbering of preferences down the list of the candidates' on the ballot paper is simply "1", "2", etc down the list. Because the order of listing for each candidate is itself chosen by ballot after the deadline (usually a couple of weeks prior to polling day, most candidates want to be at the physical top of the ballot paper to acquire the donkey vote.

Informal votes are those votes determined to be so (ie invalid) by the Electoral Officer. To bhe formal and thus counted, there should be a number in each candidate's box on the ballot paper, there should be no repetition of any number (ie, where there are three candidates the numbers should read "1", "2" and "3"; "1", "2" and "2" would be informal and discarded from the poll) and there should be no writing outside the boxes. Anything written outside the boxes renders that ballot paper invalid and its vote informal. The blank ones mentioned by Foolestroupe don't fir the first requirement and are thus informal.

Cheers, Rowan