Terry King, Lesley Soper and Kaye Crowther will represent Southland on the new Southern District Health Board.

The preliminary results were confirmed last night. The final results will be announced by 17th October.

It's the first time the Southern region has voted for its own health board representatives since 2013. The previous board was sacked by then Health Minister Jonathan Coleman and replaced by commissioners and the 2016 election was cancelled.

The Otago region will be represented by John Chambers, Dave Cull, Ilka Beekhuis and Lyndell Kelly.

Unlike the council elections, which used a First Past the Post (FPP) system, the health board elections used the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system where electors were asked to rank the candidates in order of preference.

The final absolute majority of votes (final quota) as determined at the last iteration was 7,119.29. There were 2,471 informal votes and 4,370 blank votes.