MORE than 15,000 of Newcastle’s enrolled voters took the opportunity to vote in the weeks before polling day.
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Final pre-poll figures in Newcastle didn’t quite reach 16,000, but came awfully close, with a final rush on Friday causing election officials to run out of ballot papers in Wallsend at one stage.
The two Newcastle pre-poll booths – the other was on Hunter Street – did a similar trade throughout the early voting period, which began on August 28.
However pre-poll easily surpassed the 14,500 votes that the NSW Electoral Commission had expected to see in Newcastle before Saturday.
More than 5000 postal votes had also been processed in Newcastle by Friday. The NSW Electoral Commission does not publish enrollment data for local government elections, but in 2012 about 89,700 people voted in the lord mayoral election. The popularity of pre-poll voting has increased at all levels of government in recent years.
- Full list of Hunter council polling places, P16
