2020 Council Elections

Voting in the 2020 Knox Council elections was by postal ballot.

Ballots were posted out to enrolled voters by the VEC from 6-8 October.

Voters had to ensure their completed ballot pack was in the mail, or hand-delivered to the VEC election office by 6pm* Friday 23 October 2020

(*subject to local mail clearance times)

Postal votes that were hand delivered or mailed by the above deadline were accepted and counted by the VEC if received by 12 noon on Friday 30 October.

Voting at the 2020 general election was compulsory for all Knox residents who were enrolled on the State roll for an address in the Knox Council area. There is no upper age limit to voting in Victoria.

The Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) is responsible for compulsory voting enforcement at local government elections.

In February 2021, the VEC is sending “apparent failure-to-vote notices” to persons who were required to vote, but appear not to have voted.

The apparent failure-to-vote notice does not carry a penalty. If you receive an apparent failure-to-vote notice you should respond directly to the VEC to explain what has happened.

If you do not respond to the VEC, or do not provide a sufficient response, the VEC may decide to issue an infringement notice.

The deadline for responding to the VEC is Wednesday 17 March 2021.

Any enquiries in relation to the notice should be directed to the VEC’s compulsory voting centre on 1300 551 575.

For more information visit VEC Fines and Reviews.

Council adopted a revised Election Period Policy on 31 August 2020.

The Election Period Policy forms part of Council's Governance Rules as required by section 69 Local Government Act 2020 and came into operation with the Governance Rules on 1 September 2020.

For convenience, the Election Period Policy has been extracted as a standalone document in the link below.

Download Council's Election Period Policy.

This policy applies to Councillors, Council staff and candidates for the Knox City Council general elections held on or after Saturday, 24 October 2020 and provides guidance in the lead up to, and during the election period for the 2020 elections, which commences on 22 September 2020.

The VEC’s:

• Voting Details advertisement
• Notice of election advertisement
• Close of roll advertisement

are available to view in the file downloads below.

Section 306 of the Local Government Act 2020 (the Act) requires that all candidates in the election must submit an election campaign donation return to the Chief Executive Officer within 40 days following election day.

The Act states that only gifts equal to and above the gift disclosure threshold ($500) received during the donation period by the candidate, or on behalf of the candidate to be used for, or in connection with the election campaign need to be declared.

It is the responsibility of the Chief Executive Officer to ensure that a summary of each election campaign donation return received is made available on Councils website. Section 308 of the Act states that the summary must include the name of the candidate as well as the name of the person who made the gift and the total value of the gift received from that person.

The summary of returns can be located at Election Campaign Donation Returns