Widespread reports of people not receiving their voting packs in time for the local government election have led Whakatāne District Councillor Nandor Tanczos to call for a Parliamentary inquiry into what he describes as a “shambles” of an election.
By Local Democracy Reporter Diane McCarthy
“I heard multiple accounts of registered voters not receiving their voting papers in time for the election,” Tanczos said.
“Some households received papers for a couple of people while others in the family missed out. Some people got their papers the day before close of voting, way too late to post their votes in. People who had updated their details online still had papers go to the wrong address.”
Tanczos said while he didn’t think it would have made any difference to the Whakatāne election outcome, there were some places in New Zealand where it might have “tipped the balance”.
While he encouraged people to phone Electoral Services to ask for voting forms, he said he felt many people would be put off.
“The thing is, why would you put obstacles in the way of people voting?”
A Facebook post by Tanczos after the election asking people to contact him if they had not received voting papers had 43 responses.
“About five of them, the papers arrived too late to post, the others said papers didn’t arrive at all. Some people said no one in the household got their papers. In some households, one or more persons received their papers and the rest didn’t.
“One woman said she had no problems for 44 years, then there were no papers this time. Someone updated their address online and papers still went to the wrong place. In at least one case papers were received after voting had closed.
Outgoing Mayor Judy Turner agrees there needs to be changes to how local government elections are held after a poor voter turnout at this election.
“I’m not saying it would have changed the outcome of the election, it’s not about that at all,” she said.
Turner has written a letter to send to central government asking for a review of the election process.
“I’ve spent about 40 hours door-knocking during my campaign. What hit me, considerably, was the number of people whose door I knocked on who still hadn’t received their voting papers two weeks after everybody else had. There were even cases where a wife got them, but her husband hadn’t got his. “The other day I came across a woman who got two sets of papers, one at her new address and one at her previous address.”
Having door-knocked in a similar fashion at several local elections, Turner said this year the issue of people not receiving their forms was much more noticeable than usual.
She said there was also a lack of engagement generally in the community especially in more remote areas.
“Parliament needs to take this extremely seriously,” Tanczos said. “Your right to vote shouldn’t be dependent on random chance, whether the papers turned up or not. There needs to be a full examination as to why this was allowed to happen, and what will be done to make sure it is different next time.”
He also questioned whether having private companies such as Elections NZ and Electoral Services running the local government elections was appropriate.
Unlike parliamentary elections, which are run by independent Crown entity the Electoral Commission, the local government elections are the responsibility of individual councils who hire private companies to conduct them.
Electoral Services managing director Dale Ofsoske said at each election there were always electors contacting them to say that they had not received their voting packs.
“Non-delivery could be one of a number of reasons, and that is why legislation has special votes available,” Ofsoske said.
The reasons varied but mainly fall into one of five categories - they moved house and did not change their address, they changed their address after the roll closed, they enrolled to vote after the roll closed, their name did not appear on the electoral roll (it may have been removed by the Electoral Commission in their recent roll update campaign - pack returned GNA) or their voting pack was undelivered by NZ Post. Ofsoske said this had occurred in several instances around the country and NZ Post had investigated.
“I think the number of non-delivery is slightly up from 2019 and I am putting this down to the population now being so transient and busy and simply not updating their details,” Ofsoske said.
Tanczos said it was time New Zealand looked at the way local government elections were run.
“Postal voting is a challenge for many people as it is, with a lack of post boxes and an unreliable service, especially in rural areas. For people to not even get their voting papers is completely unacceptable. “Maybe postal voting has done its dash and we need to do local government elections differently.”
Judy Turner felt the whole electoral process needed “a rejig”, but that it was unrealistic to pretend that online voting would be an option any time soon.
“I know that online voting is 10 years away, if ever, because of cybersecurity.”
Turner feels that the elections need to be conducted in a similar manner to parliamentary elections.
“I wonder if they just need an election day like central government, or an election weekend, where you’ve got a couple of days where you can register your vote. Then you can have some [voting booths] stationed around the district.”
Ōpōtiki mayoral candidate Louis Rapihana is also in support of a government inquiry into the election. He had already made a complaint to Elections NZ about Ōpōtiki District Council running short of special vote forms when it took a mobile ballot box to the Coast.
“From what I can gather there was about 30 people who were disadvantaged because of that. It wouldn’t have made a difference to the results, but they still hadn’t been given the opportunity to cast their votes.”
He said the response from Elections NZ had been that when distributing the special voting forms to councils they based the number of forms on how many were used at the last election.”
Both Tanczos and Turner commended the job Whakatāne District Council staff did to make voting easier.
“Council staff in Whakatāne did their best to take up the slack, with a drive-in voting booth on the day and staff at the service centres trained to assist with special voting, but NZ Post let the country down,” Tanczos said.
Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air.
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