Yes, and the reasons are outlined by the Australian Electoral Commission, the independent body that runs Australian elections (see the first FAQ)[0].
There are scrutineers that watch counting happen at the booth once polls close, and who also see and hear the numbers get phoned into HQ. HQ has more scrutineers from all parties checking both postal votes and recounts.
If anything doesn't match up it gets flagged. I think that the ability of every party to watch votes themselves means that trust is increased, and they have skin in the game (if they didn't object at the booth why not!?).
Pen markings are perfectly valid however, so you can bring a pen to the booth to vote with if you'd like to do so.
It's also true of course that erasers don't quite erase pencil. It would be fairly obvious that the paper was tampered with.
> If anything doesn't match up it gets flagged. I think that the ability of every party to watch votes themselves means that trust is increased, and they have skin in the game (if they didn't object at the booth why not!?).
I mean the same is true in the United States. One of the key issues with the 2020 election was footage from several jurisdictions where the public was physically blocked from viewing the counting by election officials literally holding up giant white boards. The optics of that were extremely bad.
Unlike the US the elections aren't run by some local arsehat with local rules. they have consistent rules over the entire state or country (depending on election in question)
Scrutineers are also not members of the public. They are declared and appointed by candidates and parties for polling oversight and have complete access to the counting and polling area. They're not allowed to touch ballots but they can challenge and bring them up to all the scrutineers in the location (and EC staff) and finally they can take it to the court afterwards
Election officials are also not local council\elected people they're people working for the AEC\State Electoral commission. which is as mentioned above a non partisan organisation (which is highly different from bipartisan framing)
You also have a large number of counting staff. who do the sorting and then counting with machine assistance (how many sheets are here in this stack do they match the tally the 2 people already made on that pile)
Though the senate elections have a more complex voting software stack due to STV fun.
Again, misconceptions abound. US elections are run by bureaucrats with an elected head. There are consistent rules across the entire state for all elections, with some federal oversight. Scrutineers are appointed by both parties, but also from members of the public.
Like... what do you think American elections are actually like? Do you think some democrat/republican counts them in secret somewhere?
If you're worried about someone taking away your vote by erasing your pencil marking, then you should be equally/more worried about someone spoiling your ballot by voting twice on the same ballot, thereby invalidating it. You just need to trust that the people handling your ballot won't do that.
> You just need to trust that the people handling your ballot won't do that.
Given the number of people involved in watching ballots the entire time it is happening this would require a lot of compromised people and a lot of compromised scrutineers.
It's pencil in Canada too. Pencil works. Ink pens stop working, and are far more expensive than pencil in bulk. Voting is old. Using fountain pens, and quills to vote, is far more annoying than pencil when it just works.
The mark of vote being indelible or not is irrelevant. The monitoring and protection of the ballots is far more important. For example, representatives of all political parties are involved in the count, oversight by an agency, etc. If you had time to erase and re-mark ballots, you could swap out paper ballets too.
The problem is that disappearing ink is a thing, and someone could swap out the source of ink (pen, stamp pad) in the voting booth.
Erasing is indeed a possibility with pencil markings, but this can only happen during the counting process - which should be open to anyone to audit, and anyone messing around with an eraser during the counting process would stand out like a sore thumb.
Where I have seen stamp pads used for voting, you do not take them with you in the voting booth.
You must press the stamp on the stamp pad at the official who gives you the stamp.
Stamping is fast and convenient. While corrupted officials could apply additional stamps during the counting, to make the vote invalid, that should be prevented by witnesses belonging to the parties that compete in the election.
Someone needs to gain physical access to the ballot after voting in order to erase it. If they can do that they can just as well make it invalid using a pen, or they can just tear it up.
On the other hand, disappearing ink has been around for a long time.
I would feel much better if they required ink.