Cyclone Marcus: NT Electoral Commission and Palmerston Council delay Saturday’s local government election for a week

CYCLONE Marcus will see Palmerston go an extra week without an elected council.

NT Electoral Commissioner Iain Loganathan and council’s official manager Mark Blackburn yesterday announced the election would be deferred until next weekend.

Local Government Electoral regulations allow elections to be delayed for “riot, violence, fire, storm, flood or any other similar event”.

Council chief executive Luccio Cercarelli was in discussions with the commission over extending early voting arrangements into next week.

Mr Loganathan said the commission’s lawyers had confirmed votes cast under extended early voting arrangements next week would be valid.

“The plan is to provide some level of additional early voting services next week,” he said.

Mr Blackburn said public safety was his major concern.

“Whenever these decisions are made, it’s obviously in the best interest of the public,” he said.

“We’re wanting to minimise the risk for the workers who are actually on the booths, the candidates themselves and also the general public.

“We don’t want (voters) to be at risk, we don’t want them travelling to polling centres.”

Early voting centres closed as scheduled at 6pm last night.

The cost of the election delay — which council will cover — had not been calculated yesterday, but Mr Blackburn said, “that’s the cost of open democracy”.

“Over 6000 voters have already voted early, we want to ensure everybody gets the opportunity to vote,” he said.

The eight candidates contesting the mayoral race and 17 candidates contesting the aldermen’s race all now face an extra week of campaigning.

The deferred election is also likely to push back the formal declaration of results and the swearing-in of the new council into early April.

That in turn could see a possible delay in the first planned meeting of the soon-to-be elected council — currently planned for April 3.