Y’know, it’s not often that I’d ever con­sid­er run­ning a Welling­ton City Coun­cil press release in full, but I’m going to do it right now, cos BLOODY HELL, Welling­ton, get your act togeth­er! PS: this is how to work your STV vote, explained quite sim­ply. Now hop to it. 

Vot­ing returns yet to hit 20 per­cent

Welling­to­ni­ans now only have a mat­ter of days to post their vot­ing doc­u­ments to the Welling­ton City Coun­cil elec­toral office. A total of 94 can­di­dates are stand­ing for the Welling­ton City Coun­cil, Tawa Com­mu­ni­ty Board, Greater Welling­ton Region­al Coun­cil and Cap­i­tal & Coast Dis­trict Health Board elec­tions, with six can­di­dates con­test­ing the capital’s may­oral­ty.

Over the week­end, 2009 votes came in, bring­ing the total to 26,877. This is almost exact­ly the same as this time three years ago, when 26,899 votes were returned. How­ev­er, more peo­ple have reg­is­tered to vote for the 2010 elec­tions than in 2007, so the total is half a per­cent behind the 2007 elec­tions. Only 19.83 per­cent of vot­ers have returned their doc­u­ments, which means there are 108,679 Welling­to­ni­ans out there who have yet to vote.

You can still apply for a spe­cial vote if you haven’t received your vot­ing paper by now, or if your vot­ing papers are too dam­aged or spoiled to use. Just head along to the City Council’s Ser­vice Cen­tre on Wake­field Street and reg­is­ter for a spe­cial vote. The absolute last time peo­ple can place their vote in the bal­lot box is mid­day, Sat­ur­day 9 Octo­ber. There’s still time to find out about your local can­di­dates. Go to the City Coun­cil web­site, Wellington.govt.nz, or to elections2010.co.nz to check out their pro­files [Or check out our Urban Issues tag for the can­di­dates who’ve got in touch with us].