Councillor By-election result 2022
Published on 15 August 2022
8 Councillors announced for Kempsey Shire Council
The NSW Electoral Commission has announced the result of the 2022 Kempsey Local Government Council by-election.
The election was conducted by NSW Electoral Commission and held on Saturday 30 July.
23,285 residential and non-residential electors were enrolled in the shire on 20 June 2022.
The NSW Electoral Commission representative has now distributed preferences according to the Proportional counting system as defined in Schedule 5 of the Local Government (General) Regulation 2021, which has resulted in the final outcome.
In alphabetical order, the following 8 candidates have been declared successful and will serve as Councillors of Kempsey Shire Council for the next term which will run until September 2024:
Arthur Bain
Scott Butterfield
Simon Fergusson
Anthony Patterson
Kerri Riddington
Kinne Ring
Dean Saul
Alexandra Wyatt
They will serve with Leo Hauville who was announced as the successful candidate for Mayor on Tuesday 21 December 2021.
Council thanks the departing Councillors and all of the candidates and congratulates the new Councillors on taking office.
More information is available on the NSW Electoral Commission's Kempsey Shire Council election 2022 page.
Why did we have a by-election?
The NSW Supreme Court ordered the by-election after it approved an application by the NSW Electoral Commission to void the result of the 2021 local government election in three shires, including Kempsey, requiring a by-election to be held.
The Kempsey Mayoral election was not materially impacted and the election of Kempsey Shire Mayor Leo Hauville was not challenged by the Electoral Commission. As such he will remain in office until the next full local government election in 2024.
The court ruled in March to void the Councillor election result, at the time emphasising that there was no wrongdoing on the part of the candidates who were named as defendants and noting that they regrettably would bear the burden of the failure of the iVote system.
The NSW Electoral Commission revealed in December that some users of their iVote system were unable to gain access to the system to vote in the local government elections due to technical issues in the process run by the commission.
In the case of Kempsey Shire Council there were 34 electors who were approved by the Electoral Commission but were unable to vote and did not vote by other means. Analysis of the potential outcome of those 34 votes is what prompted John Schmidt, the Electoral Commissioner, to seek a declaration that Kempsey's Councillor election be declared void.