An electoral officer managing the local body election for most councils, says voter turnout is running at about 6% lower than for the 2010 election, everywhere except in Christchurch.
There have been concerns about the number of people voting.
Electoral officer Dale Ofsoske, said voting was down, but Christchurch was the exception.
Mr Ofsoske said there was a significant amount of complacency, among voters, but many people were also away for the school holidays.
Photo: RNZ
In Central Otago, a district council electoral officer says a change in across town postal delivery targets disrupted the processing of local government election votes with just a handful of voting returns in the mail on Tuesday.
Kara Leckie said instead of thousands of votes arriving in Tuesday's mail bag there were just three, with 30 hand-delivered.
On Wednesday morning there were thousands of votes in the mailbag, and Ms Leckie said that the delay has clearly caused disruption.
A contractor which manages the vote counting for most councils nationwide, ElectioNZ, says it has not noticed any impact from the new postal delivery times.
A spokesperson said ElectioNZ has a contract with New Zealand Post to ensure electoral returns were given priority delivery.
Ms Leckie said her council had the same arrangement.
New Zealand Post said the change in delivery targets would not affect votes getting to electoral officers in time, providing they were posted by the end of Wednesday.
