DEAR News Of The Area,

THE results for the Mayoral election in Nambucca Valley have been finalised and the results are worth examining.

At the end of the distribution of preferences Gary Lee was elected with 54.12 percent of the valid votes.

The first thing to note is that 18.3 percent of the registered electors did not vote.

Of 81.7 percent that did vote 5.0 percent voted informally.

But the most interesting part is the distribution of preferences.

The Australian preferential voting system is the envy of many other countries and allows your vote to carry a full weight to your preferenced candidates if your first preference does not obtain enough votes to win.

But it only carries that power if you use the preference system by numbering enough of the candidates.

David Jones received the lowest vote for Mayor so his votes were distributed to the other three candidates.

However, 51.3 percent of these votes did not include preferences and were exhausted.

They were no longer influential and so were effectively wasted.

29.3 percent of David’s votes preferenced Susan Jenvey and so passed to her with full value.

Similarly, 12.7 percent were passed to Luby Simson and 6.7 percent to Gary Lee.

The remaining lowest vote was Luby Simson.

Fully 59.5 percent of Luby’s votes did not indicate preferences and were effectively wasted.

22.6 percent passed on to Susan and 17.9 percent passed to Gary Lee.

By not including preferences 21.8 percent of the people that voted formally wasted their vote. Gary Lee has won the Mayoral role, fair and square according to our enviable preferential voting system, with 42.3 percent of the formal votes.

It is instructive to speculate if a different result would have been achieved if those 21.8 percent of formal votes had not been wasted.

I hope that this analysis enlightens people to the importance, and power, of the preferential voting system.

Regards,
Peter SOBEY,
Valla.