In a close call every vote counts, as highlighted last week when just one vote separated two candidates contesting the final spot in Wyndham council’s Harrison ward poll.
Provisional results released on October 31 gave former mayor Kim McAliney the fourth seat in the ward, with 6172 votes after preferences, closely followed by Point Cook resident John Frost on 6171.
The Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) called for a recount, which found 108 votes had been misdirected.
These helped Ms McAliney get over the line by a narrow margin of eight votes.
In a statement, the VEC said the extra seven votes Ms McAliney picked up on the recount did not change the final result of either count, delivering a “clear endorsement of the strength of the VEC’s counting and recounting procedures”.
The VEC said given the size of Harrison ward, which recorded more than 37,000 ballot papers lodged, and the sheer number of candidates (41), “a variation of 108 in the number of informal ballot papers sorted between the initial count and the recount is extremely small”.
This was the greatest number of candidates in local government ward elections in the state’s history.
“The community can have full confidence about the integrity of the final result in the … Harrison ward election, and … the other 221 contested elections [around the state],” the VEC said.
