COUNCIL candidate Ray Howson and Mayoral candidate Tyson Golder have both slammed the process of postal voting that has left the final results “skewed” in the Maranoa Regional Council election.

Mr Howson, who has been previously critical of the postal voting system, said the current system needed a hybrid reform that incorporated both postal and ballot box systems of voting.

He commented on the process of the current count, stating that the option of postal voting should never have been open to the region.

“We’ve never done it for the Maranoa region before, and we shouldn’t have done it now,” Mr Howson said.

“People have said that it costs too much money to initiate a ballot box vote, but that argument doesn’t stack up.

“When did we start putting a dollar value on democracy?”

Mr Howson said a hybrid system of voting, which incorporated ballot boxes and postal voting, should be implemented at the next election to avoid any confusion with the process.

“We could put ballot boxes in the major centres – places like Roma, Mitchell and Surat – and then have postal votes sent out to rural areas by request,” he said.

“It just removes the issue of people not getting their papers and getting confused by the whole process, since the ECQ knows who’s been accounted for.”

He said it was hard to decide on the final results with most of the figures not yet being counted, but said the current results were a fairly solid indication.

“Even with another 2,500 votes, it will still be the same pattern, and it would take an absolute miracle for a swing to occur,” he said.

But the ECQ was mainly to blame for the current process, Mr Howson said, with the commission doing an “absolute stuff-up” of a job.

“There are still issues of people not receiving their postal votes. If you can’t get postal votes to people on the electoral roll, get someone else who can,” he said.

“We’ve never had a problem with council taking responsibility for local government elections, so why can’t they post on time?

“The current process with the ECQ has been skewed.”

Mayoral candidate Tyson Golder has declared “democracy hasn’t been served” by the sheer numbers of people not receiving their ballot sheets.

“I’d like to see the figures back on how many people didn’t vote,” he said.

“There’s got to be a way for the people so that it’s more convenient and the back-up would be voting booths on the day.

“I don’t believe democracy was served with so many people not receiving their ballots or receiving them too late.”