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Where can I vote? Do I number every box? What you need to know about the Brisbane City Council election
By Rosanna Ryan
In Brisbane, we have the honour of living in Australia’s most populous city council area.
About 1.3 million residents live within Brisbane’s borders, which stretch out north to the Pine River, south to Johnson Road near Browns Plains, and from Moreton Island (Mulgumpin) all the way to the D’Aguilar Range.
Your options for lord mayor: Tracey Price, Adrian Schrinner and Jonathan Sriranganathan.Credit: Matt Davidson
Melbourne has 31 councils, and Sydney has 25, but here in Brisbane we have one big one. And that makes this election important.
So whether this is your first time voting, or there’s something you’ve never understood about how it all works, we’re here to tell you everything you need to know.
Do I have to vote?
Are you an eligible Australian citizen, aged over 18? Then the answer is yes. Voting in Australia is compulsory, and that includes this council election.
If you don’t get your name marked off on the day, and don’t have a valid excuse, you will be sent a fine in the mail. It’s $77.40 if you pay by the due date, and double that if you pay late.
(Just to be really clear, this advice is for the Brisbane election. Many people living in the City of Moreton Bay don’t have to vote this time around, with the mayor and some councillors standing unopposed. Check with the ECQ if you’re not sure.)
Where can I vote?
Often your local school, church or community hall will be turned into a polling booth. You can use the Electoral Commission of Queensland website to find out where your closest one is.
The commission says you will only be able to vote at a polling place within your own council area – in other words, Brisbane residents need to vote somewhere within Brisbane.
The polling place at Brisbane City Hall is also open to residents of Moreton Bay, the Gold Coast, Logan, the Sunshine Coast, the Redlands and Ipswich.
In general, it’s also easiest to vote at a polling place in your own ward. If you go to a booth in another ward in Brisbane on election day, you’ll still be able to vote, but it’ll be an absent vote (so the process might take a bit longer).
When are polling booths open?
Polling day is Saturday, March 16, and booths are open from 8am to 6pm.
Why do I have two slips of paper to fill out?
One is for voting for the Lord Mayor of Brisbane City. Everyone in Brisbane gets to choose between the same candidates for this one. Whoever wins will become head of the council, and have control of the council administration and overall budget.
Your other ballot paper lets you vote for a councillor, who represents your ward. There are 26 wards in Brisbane. Your local councillor can decide how some money is spent in their wards. Councillors also sit on different committees, like transport, infrastructure, and city planning.
It’s possible that the lord mayor might come from a different party than the majority of councillors. This is what happened in the four years after the 2004 election, when Liberal Lord Mayor Campbell Newman ran Brisbane with a council dominated by the Labor Party.
Who should I vote for?
This is totally up to you. You can choose to follow a party’s how-to-vote card, or make your own decision on who to preference.
Want to know more about the policies of the LNP, Labor and the Greens? We’ve got you covered. You can also read the interviews we did with Adrian Schrinner, Tracey Price and Jonathan Sriranganathan.
Do I have to number every box?
In the council election you do not have to number every box. You do have to choose one candidate to get your first preference vote – which you do by writing the number 1 in the box beside their name.
After that, it’s up to you whether you continue numbering the boxes to say who you’d like your vote to go to if your first preference doesn’t make it to the final two candidates. This is called optional preferential voting.
If you’re also voting in the Inala byelection, you do have to number every box on your ballot. That’s because state elections have compulsory preferential voting.
When will we know the winner?
Counting doesn’t start until polls close at 6pm.
Then, we’ll be live-blogging the results as they come in – at least until 10pm, which is when the ECQ has told us they’ll stop counting votes for the night.
We can’t promise when we’ll know the winner. Last time around, Schrinner declared victory on social media at 12.33am – so it might be a late night.