NICK.BROOK@cluthaleader.co.nz
Only 23.4% of voters had returned ballots in Clutha District Council (CDC) elections in the 13 days from the start of voting on September 21 until Monday.
Some councils manage local elections themselves, but many contract private companies Electionz.com or Election Services to carry out the task.
An employee from Election Services, which is managing CDC voting, said completed forms arrived by mail to its processing centre where the count was communicated daily to each council to which it was contracted for councils to publicise themselves.
By contrast, Electionz.com publicises each of its council’s results on its own website in addition to providing the information back to their client councils.
Last week, some local candidates expressed disappointment that CDC ‘‘had not been updating voting returns daily on its website’’.
CDC chief executive Steve Hill said there had been an initial delay of three days at the start of the returns process, but this had been rectified and results were now being updated daily on the CDC website.
To view updates, visitors to the CDC’s main web page should select the ‘‘elections’’ tab, ‘‘voting information’’ and scroll down to the spreadsheet on the cluthadc.govt.nz/council/elections/voting›information page.
‘‘Every one of us would like to see as many people as possible get up and use their vote,’’ Mr Hill said.
He said a result of zero meant no returns had been received by Election Services for that day.
Electionz.com business development electoral officer Warwick Lampp said there were no rules or regulations governing the timing of release of vote returns, but said he understood many candidates considered the information a useful metric as they campaigned.
As of last Monday, 2925 of 12,487 eligible Clutha District votes had been counted.
