Thousands more votes opposing the Indigenous Voice to Parliament have been added to the Riverina's tally after an administrative error resulted in the numbers being published incorrectly at the weekend.
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The Australian Electoral Commission has confirmed the initial data for three Riverina booths that reported majority "yes" results, at Cowra and Parkes in the north of the electorate, was added to its online tally room the wrong way round.
An AEC spokesperson said the vote count was completed correctly but there was "a transposition error when inputting into the tally room".
The errors were rectified on Monday morning after The Daily Advertiser asked questions about the anomaly at the Cowra early voting centre.
The data for that booth, and two others at Parkes, were subsequently updated to reflect the accurate figures about 10.30am.
"These sorts of things are very rare and always rectified either through information provided externally and an expedited review (as has happened here) or when conducting the mandatory validation counts we perform on every single count we do," the spokesperson said.
"It is a process called fresh scrutiny that will be a large portion of this week's work."
The initial results published for the Cowra prepoll booth - at the town's Uniting Church - showed that of the 4557 total votes counted 3702 of them were in favour of the Voice and 819 were opposed to it, with 36 informal ballots.
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On Monday, the figures were updated to reflect 3702 "no" votes and 819 "yes" votes.
The data for two booths in Parkes was also changed on Monday morning.
Initial reporting showed 848 "yes" votes and 230 "no" votes at the Parkes East Public School polling booth. The figures have since been updated to show 848 votes opposing the Voice and 230 in favour.
The Parkes West booth, located in the Assemblies of God Hall, initially showed 380 votes backing the constitutional change and 125 against it. Those numbers were also reversed on Monday morning to reflect a majority "no" result.
The updated figures mean not a single election-day or prepoll booth returned a majority "yes" vote across the entire 48,988 square kilometre Riverina electorate.
It also means thousands more "no" votes have been added to the overall Riverina tally, which has increased the number of the electorate's voters who opposed the Voice to Parliament to just over three quarters.
As of 10.30am on Monday, 75.8 per cent of the Riverina's 99,270 formal votes counted were opposed to the advisory body and just 24.3 per cent were in favour.
Counting continues in the referendum, with the final results not expected until after October 27 - the deadline for all postal votes to have been received by the AEC.
As of Monday morning, the AEC said it had issued 8405 postal vote envelopes in the Riverina electorate, with 5875 returned and 5701 counted so far.
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Andrew Pearson
Andrew grew up in the western Riverina town of Hay and has strong ties to the region. He is a former DA journo who has a passion for breaking news and has covered everything from council and politics to crime and court.
Andrew grew up in the western Riverina town of Hay and has strong ties to the region. He is a former DA journo who has a passion for breaking news and has covered everything from council and politics to crime and court.
