Elections

Before Voting

Election Day!

Counting the Vote

Members of Council

Before Voting

The clerk keeps a list of everyone who lives in the community. Only people who are over eighteen and have lived in the community for three months can be on the list. A person must be on the list in order to vote.

Council decides when to have an election, but there must be at least one election every three years on a Thursday in May.

The clerk then puts up a poster telling everyone when the election will be held. The clerk has to give at least 28 days notice of the coming election.

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Election Day!

The clerk can ask people to help with the election, they are called Polling Officials.

The box where all the votes are placed is be checked to make sure its empty, then its locked tight so no one can try and cheat.

From 8.00am in the morning to 6.00pm in the afternoon, the polling booth is open so people can vote. Everyone who wants to vote comes along and tells the clerk or official their name and ward. Their name is then crossed off the election list.

The voter is given a ballot paper which has a list of candidates from their ward - candidates are people who want to be elected members of Council. The voter then places and "X" next to the two members they want to elect.

The five wards that can each elect two members to represent them in Council matters are;

• the Garawa ward;

• the Mara ward;

• the New Sub-division ward;

• the Old Town ward; and

• the Yanyula ward.

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Counting the Vote

After the polling place closes the clerk starts to count the votes. Its very important that the clerk have someone else present to make sure no one cheats, so each candidate may send a scrutineer to make sure everything is done properly.

Once the counting has finished the clerk must sign a document stating:

• Names of officials

• Names of scrutineers

• Number of votes

• Number of invalid votes (those that people couldn't understand)

• Number of postal votes

The clerk then goes and puts up a notice saying who won the election.

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Members of Council

The Council consists of 10 members. Each ward elects two people to represent them in Council matters. To view the elected members please - click here

The Council will choose a President and Vice President from among the 10 elected members at the first meeting after elections.

You need to be over the age of eighteen, have lived in the community for more than three months and be elected by the community to be a member of Council.

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