The commission has published polling unit results from three states in a machine-readable format, the first release of its kind under the new publishing requirement.
The release covers roughly eleven thousand polling units. Results are published at polling unit level with the polling unit code, registered voter count, accredited voter count and votes recorded for each party.
Why the format matters
A published result is only useful for verification if it can be checked at scale. A PDF can be read by a person and, with effort, by software. A structured dataset can be compared against other records directly.
- Polling unit level, not aggregated to ward or local government.
- Machine-readable rather than image or PDF.
- Includes accredited voter counts alongside votes recorded.
The third item is the one most likely to be used. Comparing accredited voters against votes recorded at polling unit level is the check that aggregation makes impossible.
Limitations
The release covers three states, and the commission has not said when it will extend to the rest. Historical results have not been reissued in the same format, so comparison across cycles is not yet possible.
