The Electoral Commission of South Australia and its top brass will be sweating on an independent review that it has requested into the bungled state election process.

Fresh off a massive victory, the Malinauskas government needs to tread carefully as ECSA is a statutory body required to uphold the utmost integrity but needs to be kept at arm’s length from executive power.

Behind the scenes the government is fuming at the at blunders which have almost made SA a laughingstock, if they weren’t so serious.

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Three sealed boxes of absentee and declaration votes sat idle in a Port Pirie office for three weeks after election day on March 21.

No one thought to have them counted despite them being officially marked off as valid votes on the state’s electoral roll.

Amongst the 642 votes, 81 were lodged for Narungga, where ECSA had already declared One Nation as the winner by a mere 58 votes.

Chantelle Thomas MP seat of Narrunga missing votes were found in a Stuart’s voting centre. Credit: AAP

Chantelle Thomas would have slightly increased her victory to 74, had those missing votes been added to her tally.

But remember, the official result had already been declared well before then, so they didn’t count.

It was always unlikely that Thomas would be overtaken by Liberal candidate Tania Stock, but what if she had?

Thomas was already the rolled gold winner, and a come-from-behind Liberal win would have resulted in costly court action to sort out.

It’s almost like a team winning the premiership, only to find the time clock had been wrong and players are called back three weeks later to play a few extra minutes.

The stakes are high in this political game with both One Nation and the beleaguered Liberals desperate for victory in the swinging seat.

It put those Narungga candidates under enormous and unnecessary stress from the incompetence within the ECSA processing system.

Commissioner Mick Sherry went on leave between the result being declared and the missing votes being discovered.

His assistant Leah McLay refused to explain at a media conference any detail about his leave or where he was.

I don’t care what type of leave he was on. The tax-paying voting public had a right to know his reasons for the failures.

He has a duty to keep the public informed and should have returned to sort out the mess or publicly given a reason why he couldn’t.

The independent review must be thorough and clinical in its finding.

Some booths didn’t open at the official 8am time and many others had technical glitches or lack of staff to handle the workload.

Lost votes were found weeks after the SA election Credit: AAP

Considering ECSA had been given an extra $7.2 million to conduct the election, the near $37 million spend seems to be a poor return for taxpayers.

Now the cost will further increase with funding for an independent reviewer who can be expected to charge a hefty price for themselves and their admin staff.

It’s hard to imagine the finding will be anything less than scathing and may result in heads rolling.

But even that may be a problem given the employment tenure of senior ECSA staff involved.

It’s rare that any organisation has the luxury of four years to plan an event which is so crucial to basic democracy.

ECSA has made of a mockery of a process which should be beyond reproach

It will now have to face the consequences no matter how damning they turn out to be.

Let’s just hope that all concerned can lift their games by the 2030 poll.

That planning should have already commenced.

Mike Smithson is weekend newsreader and political analyst for 7NEWS Adelaide.