Pre-polling at the next Orange City Council election would be cut to just six days under a plan before the state government.
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The Local Government NSW conference has called for all councils’ pre-polling to be cut from two weeks to only Saturday-Friday, but not Sunday, before election day.
Orange deputy mayor Joanne McRae said it was aimed at encouraging more candidates to stand as they would need to devote less time to manning the pre-poll booth to hand out how-to-vote cards.
She said the program might help candidates but it might also lead to crowding issues at the pre-poll booth.
“From my example, I was there for the two weeks and the week closer to the election day was so much busier than the first week,” she said.
“It did get so busy, there were queues and lines and there were problems with accessibility.”
She said those issues would need to be addressed to ensure it worked well.
Cr Jason Hamling said he found it difficult to get all the time off work to man the booth.
“From the point of view of a person who was trying to get elected, I didn’t go there in the first week,” he said.
“From a voting person’s view, you haven’t got the two week period so you would have to be more organised.”
At the 2017 Orange election 36 per cent of votes cast for both the mayoral and councillors’ polls were done by pre-polling.
All candidates and groups that were elected also received the most number of pre-poll votes.
The pre-poll charge was proposed by Gunnedah Shire mayor Jamie Chaffey who said it would help cut election costs.
“[It] would encourage more people to stand and allow candidates to be the face of their campaigns and discuss with the community their ideas and issues in a shorter period,” he said.
“A shorter pre-polling period would also allow for candidates that may have full-time employment more opportunity to man the stations, as well as open candidacy up to more people who previously may not have stood for election due to time constraints,” he said.
He said the two-week postal voting option would remain.