Some votes in the Dubbo Regional Council election have still to be tallied, but residents can be pretty certain they now know most of the names of the people who will be running local government for the next three years.
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The winners (and now councillors) from the Dubbo wards and those in Wellington, who were still in a “tight race” on Sunday afternoon, deserve congratulations.
So too do all the candidates who participated in the election – which marked the return of grassroots democracy to Dubbo and Wellington.
There were two real losers in the poll.
The first was the five ward system, which is a “goner”. The candidates and voters simply don’t like it. It caused confusion and frustration for too many voters. It limited their voting choices to candidates standing in their ward.
The system was imposed on Dubbo, where residents were used to voting for their favoured candidates on a cross-city basis.
Wellington voters were all in one ward, so for them voting was much the same … except it was for a vastly different council.
Some new councillors have already said they will get rid of the Dubbo wards in line with voter complaints and wishes.
But, several have said they will retain Wellington ward, which would prevent it being swamped by Dubbo’s voter numbers in future elections.
The ward system was effectively put in place by the NSW Government. It didn’t ask the people first.
Mind you that is in line with the whole merger process from start to finish – residents in Dubbo and Wellington and their elected civic leaderships were treated with contempt.
The second loss was in the number of formal vote numbers, which took a dip.
Electoral commission figures showed that by Sunday afternoon during the on-going vote tally, the informal vote had increased compared to the 2012 Dubbo election.
Exact numbers will not be known until the vote tally is finalised, but some election observers said the increase was significant.
This has been attributed to the ward system and a negative reaction to the forced council merger, which created the Dubbo Regional Council.
But, grassroots democracy is back and most took their duty seriously, despite jokes about “democracy (or freedom) sausages”.
Now for the horse-trading and the contest for Mayor.
