Div 4 remains a cliffhanger
GYMPIE Region's most contested council division is also its most unpredictable.
Even with all booth votes in and 83% counted, there was no certain winner yesterday.
Of seven candidates, Wayne Sachs holds a commanding lead with 735 votes, 180 ahead of his nearest rival Trevor Kirk.
But with so many candidates, even Mr Sachs' leading vote amounts to only 24.23% of the total, with 50%-plus needed to win.
Counting cannot be completed formally until next Tuesday evening, because of a legal requirement that 10 days be allowed for delivery of postal votes.
Then will come the almost completely unpredictable process of distributing preferences, a process which will eliminate candidates, one at a time, from the bottom up, distributing their preferences until one candidate has 50% and is then the winner.
Under Queensland's optional preferential voting system, there is no telling how many preference votes there are or where they will go, meaning no result until next week.
