Enrolment & Writ | Nominations & Candidates | Polling & Tally | After Polling Day
The nomination process
In order to stand for election a person must be nominated as a candidate.
Who can be nominated?
To be elected as a Member of the Legislative Council, a person:
must be an elector, or be entitled to have his/her name placed on the roll for a Legislative Council division; and
must have:
resided in Tasmania for 5 years at any one time; or
resided in Tasmania for 2 years immediately preceding his/her nomination.
A person is ineligible to be nominated as a candidate for an Legislative Council election if he or she is:
- a member of the House of Assembly; or
- a candidate for election in another division of either House for which the writ has not been returned; or
- a member of the Parliament of the Commonwealth.
How is a candidate nominated?
There are two ways a person can be nominated as a candidate at a Legislative Council election:
as an individual or
by a registered party.
All candidate nominations must include a $400 deposit.
Go to nomination information for Legislative Council elections for further details on each nomination application form.
The nomination period for the 2010 Legislative Council elections closed at 12 noon on Monday 12 April 2010.
Deposit refund
The $400 nomination deposit is refunded to candidates who:
withdraw their nomination before 12 noon on nomination day,
die before polling day,
are elected, or
obtain votes equaling one fifth of the quota, at any stage in the scrutiny.
At the 2009 Legislative Council elections, a candidate needed to receive approximately 2 000 votes during the scrutiny to receive a refund.
Announcement of candidates
At 12 noon on the day following the close of nominations, the names of the candidate contesting the election are officially announced.
Once the candidates have been announced, the draws for positions on the ballot paper are undertaken.
At a Legislative Council election, all candidate names are included in a single column.
The order of the candidate names is rotated within each column on the ballot paper for all Tasmanian parliamentary and local government ballot papers. This is to ensure that preferred positions on the ballot paper are shared equally between all candidates.
Go to Draw for ballot paper position for more information about how the draw is conducted.
Go to the 2010 Legislative Council election page for a list of candidates.
After the draw for the first rotation has been completed, ballot papers can be produced. The first group of ballot papers are produced quickly so they can be used for sending out postal votes and issuing early pre-poll votes. A second, much larger run of ballot papers is produced for using in polling places.
Lists of candidates for the Legislative Council elections are published in The Examiner and The Mercury after the announcement of candidates. The candidates’ names are published in alphabetical order.
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