Voters in Napier and Hastings are still dragging the chain in returning their local body elections papers heading into the last week of voting which will see a range of new mayors and councillors elected on Saturday.
Figures released on Friday, with two-thirds of the three-week polling period gone, showed 33,207 people had voted in the five local body areas in the Hawke's Bay Today circulation area - Napier City and Hastings, Central Hawke's Bay, Wairoa and Tararua districts.
It represented 26.98 per cent of the total of 123,097 on the rolls, but voting proportions were below the line in Napier, where 10,135 papers returned represented 23.64 per cent, and in Hastings, where the 13,474 returned by Friday represented 25.35 per cent.
Voting was particularly low in Napier's Nelson Park Ward, where a return of 2059 represented just 17.91 per cent of the 11,496 voters on the roll in the ward, which has two members on the Napier City Council.
At the last election, Napier had an eventual polling of 47.76 per cent, the highest in its postal vote history, but the lower poll to daste this year is being put down to the lack opf a mayoral contest, with first-term Mayor Bill Dalton re-elected unopposed.