Day 2: Council Elections 2016
Welcome to Day 2 of the 2016 council elections! Please read the Day 1 post for an introduction and more information.
Candidates
One of the great things about democracy is that anybody who is eligible to vote is eligible to run for elected office (with a few extra qualifications).
The process to nominate does take some time, effort and money. It involves submitting the candidate nomination form, candidate questionnaire and other relevant documents in person at an appointed time and date with the returning officer. There is a $250 fee, but this is returned if the candidate polls above 4% or is declared elected.
For the past two elections, the VEC has included a ‘candidate helper’ which allows users to pre-fill forms and speed up their submission. The returning officer for Boroondara confirmed that the helper generates a barcode that allows officials at the electoral office to simply scan the form into their internal system rather than having to manually enter data.
One other change for this year is the requirement that candidates must lodge their nomination forms in person. In previous years, it was possible for the candidate to authorise another person to submit their nomination on their behalf. This was changed for this year, possibly to help cut down on ‘dummy’ candidates, who would often be nominated all at once by the ‘real’ candidate.
The full nomination process and more information is available on the VEC website here.
Nominations
A few more more nominations have been published today. These are in the table below, followed by a running record of the nominees so far.