Cr Le Mottee, first elected as a west ward councillor in 2012, says he has obtained legal advice from a barrister with a view to taking the NSW Electoral Commission (EC) to court over the rejection of his nomination.

"The reason I am doing this is because all of the nomination forms were filled out correctly, properly executed with signature and dates and submitted the day before nominations closed," Cr Le Mottee said.

A NSW EC spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that Paul Le Mottee's name had not appeared on the nominations accepted by the Returning Officer for the December 4 elections.

"The EC does not comment on why a specific person's or group's nomination proposal may not have been accepted. Any concerns that are raised about a decision to reject a nomination are carefully reviewed but there is no discretion to extend time to rectify errors. Under the Local Government Regulation 2021, late nominations (nomination proposals submitted after 12 noon) cannot be accepted."

The spokesperson said that there was a right under the legislative framework to be given written reasons for the rejection of the nomination upon request, "but there is no specific avenue of appeal or internal review".

"After explaining the reasons for the rejection decision, still aggrieved persons are advised by the NSW EC to seek independent legal advice if they wish to consider taking the matter further."

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Cr Le Mottee said that he believed he was not the only NSW candidate to have a nomination rejected due to clerical errors.

"To nominate for council, you have to complete four documents for each candidate in your group and one form for the creation of your group. In this case there were 13 separate forms," he said.

"As nominations closed at midday on November 3, I ensured my nominations were in on November 2 and that night I received five emails advising that the nominations for each of the three candidates in my group had been received. A fourth email confirmed the formation of the group and a fifth was receipt of payment."

Cr Le Mottee said that 30 minutes prior to the deadline he had received emails accepting the nominations of his two other nominees [daughter] Danielle Le Mottee and Monique Malone.

"When no email came through for me, I rang to enquire. I was told that mine was still under review and they were processing as fast as they could but not to worry as they confirmed the nomination had been received," he said.

"Just before 6 pm, I received a phone call from the EC saying my nomination had been rejected on the basis that I had not signed one of the forms. This statement was incorrect, I had inadvertently uploaded the unsigned version to the website."

Cr Le Mottee said that he had made the commission aware of other candidates who had been afforded the opportunity to rectify the problem and resubmit.

"Their response was that they process as many forms before midday as they can, and if they discover an error after midday, its bad luck."

Cr Le Mottee accused the commission's response as being "undemocratic".

"You can't have a two-tiered system for fixing errors or omissions. There is nowhere where it says you will be given the opportunity to fix an error or omission if you nominate 48 hours before the close of nominations, but not if you nominate 16 hours beforehand," he said.

He questioned how his application was processed six hours after those of his other two candidates when all three were delivered at the same time.

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