Council elections tallying: Victoria deserves better

Since voting closed in the council elections just over a week ago, each day has seen The Age readers ask about where they can find results or at least an up-to-date count. That interest is heartening given the flawed and often disappointing electoral process.

Victorian council election ballot packs for 2024.Credit: Victorian Electoral Commission

It is disheartening to have to tell those contacting us that results in these elections could still be weeks away, that the figures we are relying on to keep our readers abreast of the voting have come from leaks by scrutineers and photos of paper notices stuck in councillors’ office windows (which we’ve then gone on to verify with sources).

If voters, well accustomed to seeing live tallies in state and federal polls, go looking, they will not find any results on the Victorian Electoral Commission’s website this week.

With control of 78 local government areas and more than 600 council seats across Victoria to be decided, and more than 2200 candidates in the running, the public expectation of results within a day or two of voting might require the VEC to be considerably better resourced than it is now.

There is also the question of the efficiencies or otherwise of Victoria’s local council elections being conducted by post. Voting closed with the last mail collection at 6pm last Friday.

When New South Wales, which continues to mainly host in-person voting, held its council elections on September 14, our colleagues in Sydney were able to report substantial results on the day.

Surely Victoria, even if persisting with postal voting, can do better than a weeks-long wait. Councils, in caretaker mode since September 17, are hamstrung for potentially unnecessary weeks while their councillors are confirmed.

It’s also far from clear that postal or in-person voting are the only options. Is it a question of technology? Since 2011, NSW has experimented with an online voting system known as iVote in state and local elections, though in 2021 three council elections had to be rerun at the state electoral commission’s expense after software malfunctions.

In 2013, then communications minister Malcolm Turnbull suggested voting machines in a bid to eliminate informal votes, which might also speed up collation of results. The security of such processes is, for now, still a major question mark.

What is clear is that the state government’s relationship with the tier below it will have a major bearing on the future.

Local Government Minister Melissa Horne is juggling three additional portfolios, which does not bode well.

Still, Labor has shown it is determined to remain involved in local politics, even as it increasingly strips councils of one of their key areas of responsibility, planning. It is surely possible, as the Municipal Association of Victoria suggested last year, for state and local government to find a middle ground on this issue.

Then there is the state push to divide local government areas into wards, each represented by a single councillor, which was touted by then local government minister Adem Somyurek as improving accountability and “grassroots democracy”.

A subsequent commission of inquiry into the Geelong City Council, sacked in 2016, concluded that such wards “had the effect of undermining good governance” and resulted in councillors “trading off decisions for the common good in favour of ward interests”.

This election though, every metropolitan council except the City of Melbourne has changed to smaller, single-member wards.

The regulatory conditions on those candidates are plainly insufficient. The electoral commission requires candidates to complete training on their responsibilities, failing which they are “retired”.

It is time for each candidate genuinely set on holding a public office to provide a profile and declaration of any party membership, current or past as part of their nomination.

The Age has also raised concerns about political donations. Our reporting on Casey and Moonee Valley councils has shown that concern about who is donating and where the money is going is not a fringe issue; it goes to the heart of what local government is about.

And yet the Local Government Inspectorate concedes it has not issued fines for any failures to disclose donations from the 2020 campaign. Are we to assume that nobody crossed a line, or is it more likely the line wasn’t adequately guarded?

As Victoria’s population grows, finding answers to these questions will only increase in importance. It is time for a wide-ranging rethink of how our councils are put together.

If we are going to fine our citizens for failing to take part in a system on the basis that it is such an important part of our society, then we should not serve up such a second-rate electoral apparatus to those same citizens.

The obvious starting point is looking at how this election has been run and asking if postal voting is really the best option. While we are having that debate, maybe we can look at funding, campaigning, counting and oversight.

Turnout at this election and reader feedback suggests that the public would certainly like to have that discussion.

Patrick Elligett sends an exclusive newsletter to subscribers each week. Sign up to receive his Note from the Editor.