Some 877 letters were in the mail at the Western Bay of Plenty District Council headquarters on Monday morning to push the voter turnout percentage up in the local government elections. Voting is up by about 2.5 per cent at this same point in the last election, says Dale Ofsoske.

'25.2 per cent of people have voted, three years ago it was only up to 22.6 percent. 'It's up about 2.5 percent so that's good,” says Dale.

The council electoral officer says 7846 people have voted so far out of the 31,317 on the electoral role.

In the 2007 election 37.4 percent of residents voted, 11404 out of 30480.

Read the Monday afternoon return figure for Tauranga City Council here.