The 2024 Logan Council Elections were held on Saturday, March 16th, and while Jon Raven has undoubtedly been elected Mayor, you may notice we do not have any other stories at present about the results for the various Divisional Councillor elections.
The reason for this is the completed count results from the Electoral Commission of Queensland (ECQ) are not currently available for Divisions 4, 5 and 7, and while the likely winners are relatively clear in Division 4 (Nathan St Ledger) and Division 7 (Cr Tim Frazer re-elected), the results for Division 5 are both too close to call and have too small a percentage of total votes counted to reliably speculate on, much less call, the outcome right now.
At time of writing, in Division 5 Logan West News owner Paul Jackson was narrowly ahead of Marsden takeaway food business owner Sovannary Uk, with Paul having 2,986 first preference votes against Sovannary’s 2,648 first preference votes.
The third candidate, digital marketing strategist Zoe McDonnell, has 1,585 first preference votes at time of publication
However, according to the ECQ’s own data, there are 18,259 registered voters in Division 5 and 42.37% of those votes have been counted – meaning right now there are potentially 10,523 votes not yet processed.
That is simply too many unprocessed votes for us to responsibly make a call on the outcome.
It is not just Division 5 which is suffering from a significant tallied votes shortfall, either – the results for Division 2 currently stand at a mere 39.08% complete, while Division 4 is 56.05% complete.
We contacted the Electoral Commission of Queensland (ECQ) requesting an explanation, and a spokesperson said counting has been occurring daily for the Logan City Council election since the close of polls on election day.
“However, please note that results are entered and displayed on the results website after the completion of counting rounds. This means that counting may be occurring before the results are entered into the system and approved for publication to the results website,” they said.
“Preliminary counts are conducted progressively, followed by official counts and that process continues as the Returning Officer receives postal ballots and completes the count for each vote type.
“It’s also important to note that the percentage counted figure is calculated based on the total number of enrolled electors, rather than against ballot papers available to count.
“This is because outstanding postal ballot papers will continue to be returned and included in counts progressively until 5.00pm on 26 March 2024.
Our own sources tell us the issue is related to there being no Early Voting Centre in Division 5 for this election, so all early votes cast for Division 5 are classified as Absentee Votes (as in, they were cast in an Early Voting Centre outside Division 5); and as such they require a secure and formal exchange process to Division 5 before they can be counted.
This has been happening since Sunday; some counting took place on Wednesday and is expected to continue today (Thursday) as well.
At this stage we do not believe there to be any issues with the integrity of the ballot papers themselves.
The fact remains, however, that in the meantime we cannot realistically publish stories stating particular candidates have definitely won certain Divisions when only around half (or even fewer) of the votes for candidates have been formally processed.
The ECQ have told us that “Counting will continue until all available votes have been counted, noting that postal votes can be accepted up to 10 days after election day which is 26 March 2024” and that “a declaration of the result will be made as soon as the outcome is certain” – so once we have a better and more realistic understanding of how the results have played out in Logan West, we’ll be publishing stories letting you know who your elected representatives will be.
For what it’s worth – we’re as keen to know as you are!
