Voter apathy is shaping up as the lead contender in Northland's local body elections with less than a week before the polls close.
In August, nearly 10,000 Northlanders nearly missed enrolling for the elections, and now many are in danger of not having their say.
On average about 50 percent of voters
cast their votes but as of Friday only an average of 31 percent of Northlanders had done so.
Postal voting in the Whangarei, Far North and Kaipara District Council elections, as well as the Northland Regional Council and the district health board, closes at noon on October 9.
The Whangarei District Council elections have had the highest voter turnout in the region with 33.9 percent or 16,673 voters out of 49,142.
The Kaipara District Council had next highest with 31.1 percent or 3696 of a possible 11,894 voters returning their voting papers.
The FNDC trailed with only 28.2 percent or 9533 out of 33,840 of eligible voters casting their vote.
The greatest percentage of votes were counted on Wednesday September 22, with 4.54 percent in the FNDC, 6.31 percent in the WDC and 8.49 percent in the KDC election being added to the tally.
Voter returns for the district health board and the Northland Regional Council elections were not available yesterday.
However, electoral officer Dale Ofsoske said it appeared Northlanders had grasped the complexities of the single transferable voting system being used for the district health board.
Although he could not comment on the number of informal votes received, he said the call centre had received a number of calls from people who had ticked rather than numbered the candidates they wished to be elected.
In the STV system voters have to rank their candidates in order of preference and callers had simply been advised to replace the ticks with numbers, he said.
"In these instances as long as the voter's intention is clear and there is clearly marked a one, two, three then the votes are valid," he said.
"We will only know the number of blank votes and truly informal votes on election day when we can total votes received."
