Voters will need to wrestle with a 100cm-by-31cm upper house ballot paper. A straw poll at the Tamworth pre-poll centre has suggested that top of the list of solutions might be to wind it up the wall as you go.

Voter Allison Zibens (pictured left) said she found it pretty simple, but thought the size of the ballot paper was “maybe a bit ridiculous”.

Fellow elector Aaron Harley (right) said he thought it was quite big, but possibly smaller than others he had seen. It is understood the 1999 upper house NSW ballot paper was deeper, but as wide as this year’s.

Declan Wadwell’s (centre) advice to other voters is to put the ballot paper up the sides of the voting booth so you can read the whole paper.

The three were among the thousands who have already voted ahead of the Saturday poll and pre-polling numbers yesterday continued to rise across the region’s electorates.

Barwon has already had 4251 votes cast, as of Tuesday night, with the two most popular polling booths being Broken Hill, with 2645 votes cast, and Narrabri, which welcomed 673 early voters.

This means that about 8 per cent of electors have already made their vote count.

In the Northern Tablelands, 9100 electors have cast their vote ahead of Saturday’s state election, equating to about 17 per cent of the electorate’s enrolled voters.

Armidale has welcomed 3500, Inverell 2700, Moree 1600 and Glen Innes 1300 early electors through their pre-polling centres’ doors.

Voters in the Tamworth electorate are keen to make their voices heard early, with 9300 electors having already cast their votes, with 7600 people doing so in Tamworth and 1700 voting at Gunnedah’s pre-poll centre.

The 9300 electors equate to about 17 per cent of enrolled voters in the Tamworth electorate.

There has been chatter among early voters about how to deal with the large Legislative Council ballot paper.

This year the upper house ballot paper measures about 100cm by 31cm, or just over a metre wide and more than a standard school ruler deep.