Voters in dozens of country Victorian towns face longer trips to cast a ballot on 28 November after the Victorian Electoral Commission dropped their local polling booths. An ABC analysis of commission data found 36 regional towns that had a booth at the 2022 state election will no longer have one within five kilometres.
In nine of those towns, the nearest voting centre is at least 10 kilometres away, the ABC reported. The furthest is Lalbert in the north-west, where voters will need to travel about 24 kilometres to Quambatook; only 26 people voted in Lalbert in 2022. The distances are measured in a straight line, so the drive may be longer.
West of Bendigo, the commission has confirmed it will not reopen booths at Bridgewater on Loddon, Tarnagulla and Marong. The Loddon Herald first reported the Bridgewater and Tarnagulla decisions last week. Bridgewater voters will now head to Inglewood and Tarnagulla voters to Newbridge, both about eight kilometres away, while Marong residents face about 10 kilometres to Maiden Gully or Lockwood.
Jill Hobbs, president of the Bridgewater on Loddon Development group, said the group was told last week its Memorial Hall would not be needed. “No explanation. Was our amenity deficient in some way?” she told the ABC. She called the decision “another little kick in the teeth for rural communities”, adding: “We can't sell a democracy sausage now and raise any money for a community organisation.” She said attempts to have the booth reinstated had drawn only automated replies.
Marong resident Michael Shay said the town had always had a polling centre in the 30 years he had lived there, and that both Marong Primary School and Marong Town Hall applied to be used this year without hearing back. “A lot of people that get the paperwork will just assume that there's going to be a local polling booth,” he said. “There's a lot of people in town that are probably going to have to rely on public transport, and on a weekend there's no public transport to go and vote.”
Brian Ryan, president of the Bridgewater Recreation Reserve committee, said his group had applied earlier this year for its community hub to be used again. “Regional Victoria's getting kicked around again … they're public service, they should be serving the public and they're not,” he said.
Victorian Electoral Commissioner Sven Bluemmel said the commission reviewed its network at every election, weighing venue availability, accessibility and how many voters each site could serve. “We don't own these venues, so every election we basically start from scratch,” he said. “For those individuals, I understand that and of course that's unfortunate, but that is also why we have other ways of voting.” He said there were more voting centres than ever, particularly for early voting in regional Victoria.
The shift was flagged in the commission's draft service plan for the election, published last November. It said early voting centres would rise from 155 in 2022 to about 220, and that election-day venues would be cut by about 50 sites “on the basis of the projected increase in early voting”, with an overall footprint of about 1,750 voting centres.
Ms Hobbs said she would vote early, though she felt that meant missing last-minute information before election day. Last week the commission reversed a plan to close the booth at Kaniva in western Victoria, and its venue list can still change. Election-day voting centres open from 8am to 6pm on Saturday 28 November, and postal vote applications close at 6pm on Wednesday 25 November.
