Counting has started for the South Australian Voice, with some winners already announced

Voters went to the polls two weeks ago, but counting was delayed to allow for remote and regional votes to arrive.

South Australia became the first state to legislate for an Indigenous voice to parliament last year, drawing crowds of supporters to the public event. Source: AAP / MATT TURNER/AAPIMAGE

The first members of the inaugural South Australian Voice to Parliament have been declared, with vote counting still underway.

The state's First Nations people headed to the polls on Saturday 16 March, but the electoral commission did not begin counting until yesterday to allow for postal votes from remote regions to arrive.

From a list of 113 candidates, an eventual 46 successful will emerge, representing six regions across the state.

With staggered counting times for the different regions, the winning candidates from the Far North, whose votes were counted first, were announced on Tuesday.

Mark Campbell, Melissa Thompson, Johnathon Lyons, Dharma Ducasse-Singer, Dawn Brown, Christopher Dodd and Donald Fraser were declared the local representatives for the Far North.

In the Flinders and Upper North region, there were 378 formal votes with Charles Jackson, Lavene Ngatokorua, Rob Singleton, Ralph Coulthard, Kerri Coulthard, Candace Champion and TJ Thomas prevailing.

The other regions, whose winning candidates are yet to be announced, are Central, Riverland and South East, West and West Coast, and Yorke and Mid-North.

Each will have seven representatives, except for the Central region, which will have 11, due to its larger Indigenous population.

What will the Voice do?

South Australia decided to form a state-based response to the Uluru Statement from the Heart, which called from Truth, Treaty and a representative Voice.

In March last year, the SA parliament passed the First Nations Voice Act, following consultations with the community.

The Act allows for a Voice model that closely reflects the one proposed by the Calma-Langton report commissioned by the Morrison government.

That means there will be two levels of Voice bodies: local Voices and a state Voice.

Local voices will consult with and listen to the concerns of the residents of their respective communities, and advocate for what they and their communities believe are the solutions to those issues.

Each region will then elect two members to represent them in the state-level Voice, which will then relay the concerns of their communities to the relevant government ministers.

The idea, as it was with the federal Voice, is that communities are given direct access to those in power, and a pipeline for Indigenous solutions to reach the ears of government.