East Gippslanders can no longer vote for Matt Stephenson in the upcoming East Gippsland Shire Local Government Elections.
Mr Stephenson is one of 16 local council election candidates across the state to have been retired after being found ineligible to nominate.
Many of these were a result of routine checking by the Department of Government Services and Local Government Victoria crosschecking the VEC’s list of candidates with the register of local government candidate training. This process identified that as of Monday, September 30, 12 candidates did not complete their training as declared in their nominations.
It is a legislative requirement for candidates to complete this training in the two years before election day in order to be able to nominate. As part of the nomination process, candidates are required to declare they have completed the training and specify a completion date for the training. More than 99 per cent of candidates successfully completed the training.
Before retiring each candidate, the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) provided them with an opportunity to respond to the intention to retire them, as required by the Local Government (Electoral) Regulations 2020. As a result, some candidates were subsequently matched against the register of local government candidate training and were not retired.
This brings the total number of retired candidates to 16, after four candidates were retired just after the close of nominations after being found ineligible to nominate. This brings the current total number of candidates running in the elections to 2215.
Mr Stephenson’s retirement occurred after ballot papers had been printed so his name cannot be changed. When counting votes for these elections, Mr Stephenson’s votes will be passed on to other candidates according to voters’ preferences.
