Tally Room The Focus On Australian Election Night

National Tally Room and Virtual Tally Room the focus on election night

When voting for the Australian federal election closes at 6pm this Saturday 24 November, national focus will switch to live election coverage coming from the media at the National Tally Room and detailed results available on the AEC's web-based Virtual Tally Room.

"On election night, the National Tally Room is a hub of activity with several live television and radio stations broadcasting from the venue and reporting on counting from over 7,700 polling places around the country," said Electoral Commissioner Ian Campbell.

While the National Tally Room at Canberra's Exhibition Park provides the backdrop for the media, detailed results on election night will be available online in the Australian Electoral Commission's (AEC) Virtual Tally Room (VTR) at www.aec.gov.au.

"Anyone will be able to follow in detail the progress of the counting of votes for the House of Representatives and the Senate via the VTR. The VTR will update every 90 seconds on election night and display results across approximately 1200 individual pages on-screen," he said.

The National Tally Room, costing the AEC in the region of $1 million, involves several months of planning and organisation, and takes around two weeks to build.

"The National Tally Room will have approximately 70 computer terminals and capacity for an additional 130 devices, 20km of voice and data cabling, 3 mobile telephone repeater stations, a PABX with capacity for 100 extensions and up to 650 amps of electrical capacity," Mr Campbell said.

In 2004, around 2,400 members of the public visited the National Tally Room and there were also up to 700 members of the media and their guests and support staff, 4 major and 2 minor purpose-built television studios, 100 political party workers and Members of Parliament, 160 international and other official guests and 150 AEC and other National Tally Room workers.

On election night and the three week period following in 2004, over 150,000 visitors accessed ten million page views in the Virtual Tally Room.

For more information about the National Tally Room, the Virtual Tally Room and the 2007 federal election visit www.aec.gov.au

ENDS

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