As expected, former mayor Bob Stewart polled well in Bombala, picking up 484 votes of the 681 formal votes tallied at the Bombala High School booth alone.

Similarly at Delegate, he was the overwhelmingly popular choice with 122 of the 190 votes in his favour.

For Lynley Miners, Cooma and surrounds was where he found most traction, polling highly at Adaminaby (186 votes) and Berridale (132), with the bulk of votes at smaller locations like Bredbo and Dalgety also heading his way. He also polled highly in pre-polling at the Cooma returning office (351 votes).

However, he wasn’t the only candidate to benefit from a high pre-poll turnout (2903 formal votes lodged with the Snowy Monaro returning office).

Also doing well prior to Saturday’s election were John Last (392), James Ewart (379), Mr Stewart (274 in addition to 169 pre-poll votes lodged at Bombala) and Rogan Corbett (254).

Across the newly formed local government area, 11,746 votes were counted.

Of those, 6.85 per cent were informal, meaning the ballot papers were not filled out correctly by 805 voters.

Of the 27 candidates, only three reached the quota for election based on primary votes. This means voters who marked Bob Stewart, Lynley Miners and James Ewart at number one on their ballot paper.

The quota is reached by taking the number of voters in the shire and dividing by the number of seats on council plus one, i.e. 12.

For those who don’t reach that quota on primary votes, preferences come into play. The NSW Electoral Commission will distribute votes based on the preferential voting system, whereby the candidate who polled the lowest is excluded and votes are added to those candidates marked at number two on the excluded candidate’s ballots.

And so on until 11 candidates surpass the quota.

READ MORE