Voting Process

The process described below is for the Sportsman, Sportswoman, Disabled Sportsperson, Team, & Coach categories, as well as for the supreme Halberg Award.
 
There are two phases in the actual voting process for the Westpac Halberg Awards listed above:

• Phase One selects the finalists in each category. To achieve this, each member of the Voting Academy considers the nominees’ biographies, and then votes (using a ranking system) for each category. All the votes are then totalled to establish the finalists for each category (four per category). This phase occurs in mid-December.
• Phase Two selects the winners in each category as well as the supreme Halberg Award winner. In this phase the Academy are given one list (in random order) containing the sixteen finalists for the Sportsman, Sportswoman, Disabled Sportsperson, & Team categories (ie the four categories which are eligible for the supreme Halberg Award, with four finalists each). They then rank these from one to sixteen. When these votes are tallied it provides both the category winners & supreme Halberg Award winner. The Coach category is voted on separately. This phase occurs in mid-January.

 
NB
All voting is by ‘secret ballot’, which means that members of the Academy do not know how one another vote, and the voting Academy do not meet as part of the voting process.
The task of totalling votes for both phases is done by Deloittes.
A sporting achievement which occurred in late December, ie after Nominations and Phase One voting, could still be considered & included in Phase Two voting - & therefore still be able to win their category & supreme Halberg Award.
The process above means that while the voting process is controlled by the Halberg Trust, the actual voting is completely independent of Halberg Trust staff and Trustees.