Western Australia's year filled with many votes and strange results An election expert says the prospect of a fresh Senate election in WA is stronger than ever. IT'S not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting. So said Tom Stoppard in his 1972 play Jumpers. And so it proved, disastrously, in Western Australia during a year of many votes and strange results. While Tony Abbott was bringing to an end the saga of Labor's self-flagellation with his victory on September 7, another political car crash was developing in the electoral booths of Bunbury East, Wundowie, Mount Helena and Henley Brook. On election night, dozens of boxes of the voluminous Senate ballots were counted, accounted for and loaded into vans for transport into town. They were ticked off again the next day. But then, when the desperately tight fight for the fifth and sixth senate seats in the west needed a recount, they were gone. And so was a big chunk of the Australian Electoral Commission's credibility. "We're left with a nagging and almost irreconcilable doubt about the outcome," AEC Commissioner Ed Killesteyn said. And, of course, this is very damaging to the reputation of the AEC which has been earned over many, many decades of dedicated service to the Australian community. The ripples of those lost ballots spread wide - with senators-elect from the Palmer United Party and Labor robbed of their victories, two more candidates dealing with defeat and victory within weeks, investigations launched, and the High Court being called on to sort out the whole sorry mess. Clive Palmer. And for West Australians, it will almost inevitably mean another trip to the polls - their fourth in just over 12 months. Those voters could be excused for recalling another quote, from Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, who described elections as "a mud bath for every soul concerned in it" - after a year where democracy has visited them regularly, but served them fitfully. In March, Premier Colin Barnett and his Liberal government were convincingly returned for a second term. But the sweet taste of that victory did not last long, with the often abrasive premier admitting everything that could go wrong did in the months that followed. Delayed new hospitals, the loss of the state's AAA credit rating, spiralling debt, budget backflips, teachers' strikes and $300 million lost on a bungled power station revamp all put Mr Barnett on the back foot, and left many questioning what they had voted for. The federal election battle was largely fought elsewhere, with Labor's big names avoiding the trip west, and there was the status quo of seats being maintained - although the party's popular vote in WA dipped to an abysmal 29 per cent. And in a sign of electoral fatigue, or possibly complete indifference, October's local government poll attracted one of the lowest turnouts in WA history, with just over a quarter of enrolled voters bothering to take part. That ill-fated senate recount was still going on while less than one in four of WA's residents ticked the box on their mayors and councillors. Premier Colin Barnett. And the mystery of the missing ballots that emerged on a horror Halloween for the AEC looks certain to prompt an unprecedented re-run of the senate vote - which, if all the original ballots had been able to be recounted, may have been decided by just one vote. "If these votes could be included in the count, then they would produce the closest Senate election result in Australian history with a gap of just a single vote determining the final two Senate seats," ABC election analyst Antony Green said. The Shooters and Fishers Party would lead by one vote out of 1.3 million. This is so close that even if the votes were not missing, the result would go to the Court of Disputed Returns to adjudicate. But they were missing, and still are. And after troubleshooter-for-hire Mick Keelty concluded in an investigation that the 1370 ballots were never likely to turn up, the AEC asked the country's highest court to declared its work null and void - which means more work for voters. In submissions to the High Court, the AEC has asked for the full bench of seven judges be called on to rule on the WA poll, with a deadline of March 18 to allow writs for an election to be issued three days later. That would mean the latest a repeat Senate election could be held is April 26 - exactly a year to the day since billionaire Clive Palmer announced the formation of his party.