The pre-poll voting station in Mudgee has been busy this week, with more than 2500 voters visiting the St John’s Anglican Church Hall between Monday and Wednesday to vote before Saturday’s election, and just as many expected when the numbers are tallied for Thursday and Friday.
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Divisional returning officer Erin Eames said that by the end of Wednesday, the number of pre-poll votes received had already surpassed the total pre-poll votes lodged locally in the 2010 election.
She said pre-poll voting had been popular across the electorate, perhaps due to the late date change that left the election clashing with voters’ pre-existing weekend plans.
In the first three days of pre-poll voting, Mudgee counted 2,491 ordinary votes and 205 declaration votes, which included voters from other areas and voters whose names could not be found on the electoral roll.
Across the Parkes electorate, by the end of Wednesday a total of 13,230 votes had been lodged.
One of the pre-poll votes lodged in Mudgee belonged to Labor candidate Brendan Byron, who spent yesterday at the pre-poll station meeting voters who were flowing through at the rate of about a person a minute.
Mr Byron’s decision to vote pre-poll was because, as a self-described “giant dork”, he was keen to vote below the line on the metre-long senate ballot.
The 20-year-old Gulgongite had handed out flyers for other candidates at the 2010 federal election and last year’s Heffron by-election, and said it was a great chance to have a last word with voters, particularly those who hadn’t yet made up their minds.
Based on the how-to-vote sheets that voters accepted as they entered the building, he said Labor and the Nationals so far appeared evenly matched.
