THOUSANDS of pre-poll voters are expected to pass through the doors of Bath-urst’s council election office on Bentinck Street over the next two days.
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Returning officer Stuart Evennett said almost 3000 people had lodged a pre-poll vote by the time the office opened yesterday, and he expected a total of about 8000 pre-poll votes by the time they close at 6pm tomorrow.
Mr Evennett said those numbers made the pre-poll booth easily the biggest in Bathurst, with results there to give a good indication of how the election would pan out overall.
“The pre-poll booth is about three times bigger than the next largest in Bathurst so the candidates will be very eager to hear from the scrutineers present here once we start counting at 6pm on Saturday,” Mr Evennett said.
“The counting here will be the real litmus test for how the election is going.”
Mr Evennett said people’s busy lives meant that pre-poll voting was becoming more popular each election.
And with no absentee voting available at council elections, anyone who will be away from Bathurst on Saturday must cast their vote early.
There will be 18 polling booths open across the region on Saturday and counting in each booth will start immediately on the close of polls at 6pm.
Those results will be phoned through to the election office to be collated and checked before being uploaded to the NSW Electoral Commission’s online virtual tally room.
It is expected candidates will need to secure a quota of just over 2000 votes to win a seat on council, but the exact figure won’t be known until the close of postal votes at 6pm on Monday.
The quota will be equal to the number of formal votes cast divided by the seats available (i.e. nine).
There are about 23,000 registered voters on the Bathurst electoral roll but voter turnout numbers are always considerably lower at local government elections than at state or federal polls.
