Last chance to have your say before the count begins

THE Tasmanian Electoral Commission is preparing to count about 200,000 ballot papers as communities across Tasmania find out who their new local representatives are.

Tasmanian Electoral Commissioner Andrew Hawkey preparing for the arrival of ballot papers to begin counting in the local government elections. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

THE Tasmanian Electoral Commission will begin counting about 200,000 ballot papers on Tuesday evening as communities across the state start to find out who their new local council representatives are.

There will be plenty of nerves among some of the 481 candidates who have put up their hands to be elected to 28 of Tasmania’s 29 councils – Glenorchy had its election in January.

The good news is there is still time to make your vote count by visiting your council offices before 10am and dropping your completed ballot papers in. Any votes received after that time will not be counted.

Ballot papers will then be distributed to TEC’s counting centres in Devonport, Launceston and Hobart.

Tasmanian Electoral Commissioner Andrew Hawkey said volunteers would begin opening envelopes from 10am.

“This will take until about 3pm and then we will start throwing ballot papers to each candidate for first preferences,” he said.

“Our first-throw candidates will come through for mayors and deputy mayors about 6.30pm, probably from 7.30pm onwards for councillors.”

Mr Hawkey said regions with a large number of mayoral contenders, such as Hobart with 11, would be unlikely to know the result until later in the week.

“We will have first preference votes, and counting those and then rechecking those will take all night,” he said.

“We will then distribute the lowest-placed candidates until someone gets 50 per cent.”

Barring four North-West Coast councils, where votes are being hand counted, all the other 24 councils will have their votes data entered at Launceston and Hobart.

“This will take a quite a few days to count and for some councils, like Hobart with 36 candidates, we won’t know until the weekend,” Mr Hawkey said. “What we will do is take about 20 per cent of the ballot papers from each council and put a single data entry in and calculate on that.

“We will then do a full Hare-Clark scrutiny sheet on that 20 per cent and release that as a provisional figure [on Tuesday night], with the understanding the final result could change.”

The TEC is inviting the public and candidates to its public tally rooms from 6pm at Hobart’s C3 Convention Centre, Launceston’s Northern Bombers social room and Devonport’s paranaple centre.