Local government elections were held across the state on October 16.
Despite some technical issues on the night, with the usual running figures unavailable on the projector screen and a long wait for the Australian Electoral Commission in Perth to validate the mayoral election results in Mandurah, the votes were finally tallied and the winners announced.
Mandurah's mayoral election saw Rhys Williams returned for a second four-year term as mayor with a landslide victory of 85 percent of the votes over candidate and current councillor Ahmed Zilani.
Mr Williams polled 17,859 votes to Mr Zilani's 3,018.
The ward elections saw a couple of upsets, with long-term councillor for the east ward Lynn Rodgers (1,776 votes) unseated by Daniel Wilkins (2,467 votes) and Amber Kearns (1,904 votes), after 20 years of serving the community in the role.
The other incumbent who lost their seat was coastal ward councillor Merv Darcy (1,977 votes), who after one term lost to Bob Pond (3,757 votes), a founding member of the Peel-Harvey Catchment Council.
North ward saw Peter Jackson returned with just over 50% of the votes (2,855) against two other candidates, Jacob Cumberworth (2,201 votes) and Ben Fagan (627 votes). This will be Mr Jackson's third term on council.
The hotly contested town ward, which had two seats available, voted in Ryan Burns (2,875 votes) and returned current councillor Dave Schumacher (2,031 votes) by a fairly narrow margin over the next closest candidate Shannon Wright (1,862 votes).
In the Shire of Murray there were five seats on council up for grabs.
Deputy Shire president Douglas McLarty (2,203 votes) retained his spot, along with Stuart Kirkham (1,961 votes) and Geoff Black (1,603 votes), however councillors Brenda Beacham and Brad Cardilini have lost their seats.
The new councillors replacing them are Stewart Carter (1,762 votes) and David Pike (1,571 votes).
Elected members will be sworn in in the coming week at special council meetings for each local government area.
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