Voters cast early to keep weekend free

Whether you’re voting early just to keep your weekend free, or have a legitimate reason Nowra’s pre-poll office is always a busy place leading up to an election.

This year’s two pre-poll offices in Shoalhaven have been no different.

In fact as of 3pm yesterday 9500 people had cast a pre-poll vote.

A pre-poll office at the Shoalhaven City Council Administration Building and the other at the Ulladulla Civic Centre opened two weeks ago and have been catering for a steadily building number of people choosing to vote early.

In Nowra yesterday the volunteers handing out how to vote cards were a wind-blown lot.

Hats, hair, balloons and sandwich boards were flying all over the place as the stoic but smiling volunteers assisted those who turned up to cast their vote early.

The pre-poll offices will close today at 6pm.

On election day, Saturday, September 8, there will be 37 polling places throughout the Shoalhaven.

They are located in community and church halls as well as schools.

Local residents will be able to keep a watch on the election results as they come in with coverage via a link on council’s website.

Returning officer Grahame Allen said residents could expect the results to start filtering in from the smaller polling booths by 7pm with the larger booths expected to take an additional two to three hours to count the votes.

“Saturday night will see staff busy counting first preference votes at each of the individual booths,” Mr Allen said.

“These results will be loaded onto council’s website as soon as they are received allowing local residents the opportunity to keep a close eye on proceedings.

“From here, election staff will then undertake a check count on Sunday and Monday to make sure the votes have been sorted properly.”

To view the election results live visit www.shoalhaven.nsw.gov.au from 7.30pm Saturday.