The race to fill former Chief Minister Kate Carnell’s Legislative Assembly seat was throw wide open yesterday.
Until now the presumption was that Liberal Jacqui Burke would win the seat. But after close of counting yesterday, Liberal John Louttit is well ahead.
ACT Electoral Commissioner Phil Green issued figures at the close of the count yesterday with Mr Louttit on 6487 votes ahead of Mrs Burke on 3736 with Labor’s Marion Reilly next on 240 and the other seven candidates each this less than that.
Mr Green warned that these votes “”are not necessarily representative of the votes still to be counted and the relative order of the various candidates may change after further counting”.
Mr Louttit said yesterday, “”I didn’t go into this just for the fun of having my name in there.”
The seat is determined on a countback of the 25,379 ballot papers that marked Mrs Carnell as first preference. No other ballots are looked at. Under the ACT’s Hare-Clark system the aim is to find the candidate next most preferred by the people who voted for the retiring member. There are no by-elections for the ACT Legislative Assembly.
By yesterday 11,374 of the 25,379 votes had been counted.
The commission concentrated yesterday on the votes that were distributed from Mrs Carnell through Gary Humphries to Greg Cornwell. It is likely that these were the most favourable to Mr Louttit because they represent the strong party-line vote which would favour a long-serving party member.
Votes that went Carnell 1 and then to candidates other than Mr Humphries and Mr Cornwell might be expected to favour Mrs Burke. That was the pattern of votes spilling down as candidates were excluded during the 1998 count. It is likely that Mrs Burke’s vote will come back in today’s count.
Yesterday’s count, however, made it clear that no other candidate than Mr Louttit or Mrs Burke can win the seat, so it will stay with the Liberal Party.
Mr Louttit said, “”I am not counting on anything until I see the final result. There are quite a few votes to count yet.”
But his scrutineers in 1998 had indicated that the preference flow was such that in any countback of a Carnell vacancy he would have a good chance.
Mrs Burke said,
Leave room for a comment….she will ring me 9pm and I’ll ring in.