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].