Dunedin City Council general manager city services Sandy Graham said remaining city voters must hand-deliver their voting envelopes only, to a voting office at the Civic Centre or nearby voting boxes in the Octagon by noon today.
"That's the only option and votes have to be with the election staff before noon."
Ms Graham emphasised it was far too late to attempt further postal voting.
She said she was expecting a final turnout closer to the 43.49% of 2013 than the 45.17% of the eligible vote achieved in 2016.
On Wednesday, a sizeable amount of postal votes apparently briefly brought the cumulative percentage of the vote cast to 34.64%, up slightly on the 32.89% figure on the comparable date in 2016.
Nevertheless, Ms Graham pointed out that the 37,156 returns (39.75%) as of yesterday was below the 41.02% that had voted by the same stage in 2016.
A high proportion of the further votes received yesterday had arrived by hand, and "very few votes" had come through postal voting.
"We always want more people to vote.
"The more people that vote the better," she said.
