Progress results have confirmed the first members of Invercargill City Council, with polls in this year’s local body elections now officially closed.
Polls in local body elections throughout New Zealand closed at midday on Saturday, 11 October. Progress results delivered to Invercargill City Council at 1pm have not yet delivered clear winners in the Mayoralty race.
Invercargill City Council Deputy Electoral Officer Michael Morris said sitting Councillors Steve Broad and Alex Crackett had been re-elected, having received 9,589 and 8,350 votes respectively.
Tom Campbell is leading the race for the mayoralty, with 6,064 votes so far. The next candidate in line, Alex Crackett, has received 4,167 votes. There are 1,897 votes between the two.
With 2,256 ordinary votes and 354 Special Votes yet to be counted, it was not yet possible to determine the outcome for all of the Council candidates, or the winner of the race for the top job, he said.
Meanwhile, of the seven candidates standing for the Bluff Community Board, the top five at the time of the Progress Vote return were Jo Eruera, Justin Sutherland, Ray Fife, Haylee Simeon, and Frazer Murdoch.
For the Invercargill Licensing Trust, which has six vacancies, the leading contenders were Paddy O’Brien, Suzanne Prentice, Angela Newell, Graham Hawkes, Sheree Carey, and Nick Jeffrey.
Progress results include all votes cast up until late on Friday, 10 October, however this does not include the final votes cast yesterday or any of the votes returned to the ballot box today. Progress results also do not include Special Votes.
Preliminary results were expected on Sunday, and would include all votes except for special votes, Morris said.
It had been pleasing to see the community engaged in local body elections, he said.
“Our community is a passionate and vocal one, and it was great to see that translate into a turnout of voters who were motivated to help guide their city through the next three years."
