For the first time, people who have no prior council experience have also been allowed to put their hand up for the mayor or deputy mayor job, following a change to the legislation in August.

With a total of 476 candidates vying for one of the 263 councillor-alderman, deputy mayor and mayor positions on the 29 councils, it makes for an interesting contest.

Tasmania remains just one of three states in the country that does not have compulsory local government postal ballot voting.

According to figures from the Tasmanian Electoral Commission after the 2011 election, just 54.28 per cent of voters actually took the time to vote.

Although this is low, it is considerably better than Western Australia, 33.35 per cent and South Australia, 32.88 per cent.

Ballot forms will be received in the post over the next few days, as official polling gets under way tomorrow and closes at 10am on Tuesday, October 28.

Advertising

Candidate corflutes have sprung up in prize positions on fences and businesses over the past couple of months and paid print and broadcast media advertising has ramped up.

Under the Local Government (General) Regulations 2005 electoral advertising, candidates are limited to 50 corflutes or signs, 50 minutes on radio, 10 minutes on television and two pages in a daily newspaper circulating in the municipal area or five pages in any other newspaper circulating in the state.

Regulations, however, still need to catch up with social media as little can be done yet to limit online advertising.

Spending for those running as a councillor-alderman is capped at $5000 and for mayor, $8000.

However, if a candidate got in early – before August 14 – they could have spent as much as they liked on their campaign.

Although there has been talk of some candidates flouting the 50 signs rule, Tasmanian Electoral Commissioner Julian Type said it did what it could to ensure people abided by the regulations.

With 29 councils to police he said it was impossible for it to count how many posters each candidate had, so it relied on people playing fair and also information from the public if someone was blatantly breaking the rules.

Mr Type said it had successfully prosecuted a past candidate for breaking the broadcast regulations.

Due to workloads, such instances are followed up after the election, he said.

Disclosures

Tasmania remains the only state in the nation where local government candidates do not need to declare campaign donations.

According to a not-for-profit website, www.fundinganddisclosure.org.au, only a handful of candidates around the state have so far declared if and from where, donations have come.

Five of the 25 candidates running in Launceston have taken the opportunity to declare their donations – Darren Alexander, Tom Ellison, Danny Gibson, Krista Preece and Albert van Zetten.

Of those so far listed, only Mr Ellison has received $800 from a company.

All the candidates stated they were independent.

Of the surrounding councils, only Mick Tucker, who is running for Break O’Day, Tony Scott for Dorset, Dean Gibbons for George Town, Andrew O’Connor for Meander Valley and Carol Bracken and Tim Woinarski for West Tamar, have declared their positions.

All state they are independent and their campaigns are self-funded.

As part of the Review of Local Government (General) Regulations 2005, in which all councils are taking part , Launceston City Council is expected to recommend to the Local Government Association of Tasmania that public disclosure of donations above a minimum threshold take place.

Party politics

It is hard to understand why local government candidates don’t declare their political party allegiance.

Although this was once the norm, when you see ‘‘independents’’ with corflutes authorised by a former Liberal or Labor minister, or if you do a quick internet search and discover they are actually a party member, is it not being deceptive?

Only the Greens  openly declare their candidates.

For all the details on your electorate, including candidate statements, head to www.electoral.tas.gov.au.