Local government elections: Dubbo mayor and deputy mayor concerns over postal only voting

Councillors Ben Shields and Stephen Lawrence have raised their concerns over the proposal for the September 2021 council elections, with Cr Shields saying he doesn't want to see a 'one size fits all' approach taken.

While he understood the state government's proposition, which is "safer in a COVID environment", Cr Shields said it should be enforced on a case-by-case basis.

"I certainly agree if you've got areas where there is COVID you don't want everyone funnelling into one small area over a one day period," he said.

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"In the areas where there's no COVID, I can't see a logic in changing it."

Cr Shields said he was also concerned that postal-only votes would threaten democracy and skew votes.

"If a household is to get a bunch of ballots just turn up to their house, is it the head of the household or the most dominant person has more than one vote, which is what I worry about," he said

Dubbo Regional Council deputy mayor Stephen Lawrence said he was "strongly opposed" to the proposal.

"I think that it's a way of suppressing voter participation," he said.

"It's hard to see that its anything other than a cost cutting decision, but I think will have an impact on participation."

Cr Lawrence said it was problematic for local government areas because it risked democracy and an increase of informal voting, which he said in his representative area, East Ward, was already about 15 per cent.

"It's of concern that it will give power in some family situations to particular members of the family, who can dictate who other people can vote for, because you loose the privacy of the voting booth," he said.

Cr Lawrence said it would also generate informal voting because people were voting from home and wouldn't have the advice of the electoral commission staff.

"So I would expect to see a lower rate of participation and a higher rate of informal voting and that is certainly my understanding of what the Victorian experience has demonstrated," he said.

For Cr Lawrence the proposal also risked skewing the outcome, with many people less likely to cast a ballot due to the mailing system.

"A lot of young people don't interact with the mail service, everything's email, text message, social media, so they're not necessarily in the habit of checking the mailbox," he said.

"You only have to look at the problem most of us have with receiving bills and things that come in the mail, there's just so many opportunities for things to go astray so to use that system for something as important as voting I think its really the wrong thing to do."

Cr Shields, who is on the board of Local Government NSW, said they were actively opposing postal-only voting and putting detailed submissions to the government.

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