The website was unavailable in the morning,giving the error message “system update in progress”. When it returned,some voters waited for hours to be sent the code they needed to register their vote online.
By the time polls closed at 6pm,Bargo resident Robert Town was still waiting. Mr Town,46,and his partner had registered on the website at about 10.30am and 11.16am – well before the 1pm cut-off.
As the hours ticked by,he tried to vote by phone but was told he wasn’t able to,and began to ask for further information from the NSW Electoral Commission on Twitter.
“They posted with certainty they would have everyone issued their codes after the one o’clock cut-off,then they didn’t have any updates,” Mr Town said.
One error message which greeted voters on the website was:“iVote is currently receiving a high volume of applications. Please try again soon.”
In a statement to theHerald, the electoral commission said it is “aware that some iVote users were unable to gain access to the system to vote today”.