Council elections (2)

Well, the council elections are (nearly) out of the way.   There have been media reports about some "dirty tricks", and I don't think Stonnington was immune (see image).  Likewise, the fact that one of the candidates in our ward was 19 and the daughter of an existing councillor in a different ward (who, over the years, appears to have been involved in some of the more, shall I say, "colourful" issues) gave rise to comment.

On checking the internet on election night,  the votes of only about 32% of eligible voters had been counted, and no results were offered.   I assume that this may have been because so many people voted beforehand (I was told that, on Thursday and Friday, the pre-poll centres were very busy). Perhaps these votes weren't counted on Saturday night?  By Monday morning, the votes from just over 55% of the enrollment had been counted, and apparently more counting is to occur.    But in one of the other wards, it was stated that counting was complete, and only 64.35% of voters had voted.  I know that people over 70 don't have to vote, but even so,  the turn-out seems to be low.  And in our ward,  over 9% of votes that have been counted were informal.

Hence, we don't know yet who will be successful.  At the time of writing, the two councillors standing for re-election look to be in a reasonable position, followed by the Greens candidate.    Some distance behind him, there are two more candidates quite close together.  Given the rather complex proportional representation system, perhaps things could yet change.