Three-week election vote count no barrier to negotiations - expert

The 20-day wait for the final vote count is about accuracy, not just special votes - and if politicians are anxious there's nothing stopping negotiations starting now.

By Russell Palmer of RNZ

That's the view of constitutional law expert Graeme Edgeler, who along with the Electoral Commission is pointing to tech changes to speed up the process next time.

A week after the election, and with a fortnight left before the final result, chief electoral officer Karl le Quesne told RNZ most of the time taken was to ensure accuracy.

"We take a great deal of care to make sure it's complete and accurate, so people can trust the result," he said.

Improvements had already been made since 2023, when a rushed process meant multiple errors were missed.

"We've strengthened not only that those checks get done, but we've reviewed those checks and improved them to make it easier to actually apply them, and that's one of the real reasons we still need the 20 days to get a complete set of results produced," le Quesne said.

The process includes recounts of ordinary votes, checking votes against enrolments, tallying the number of electorate and party votes to ensure they match, removing any ineligible votes, waiting a legally mandated 10 days for the special votes to be sent to their electorate (many from overseas), counting the special votes, and doing a final series of quality assurance checks.

Le Quesne said a key thing slowing down the count was the need to combine the rolls from the 2700 voting places into one for each electorate, to ensure names had not been crossed out twice.

Edgeler said such cases then needed to be investigated.

"Maybe it was a mistake - you know, Dan Smith voted at one, and they accidentally crossed off Dean Smith's name ... [but otherwise] if you vote twice, all of your votes get cancelled."

The actual special vote count would happen at the end, which he said aimed to avoid votes being disallowed due to bias from those doing the counting.

"Sort of, someone objecting because 'oh, this is a vote for the other person, my scrutineer is going to try and object and say that shouldn't be counted', so just a protective measure."

Edgeler said New Zealanders should be assured any mismatch between the election night result and "the real count, the careful count" was not only because of special votes but thorough checks and tallies.

Le Quesne said the commission was making good progress.

"It's going really well. We've just about completed the production of one roll for every electorate; we're well into doing the second count of the ordinary votes that were cast before election day and on election day; we're getting the special votes repatriated, they're starting to land in their home electorates.

"We've already started the process on validating and qualifying those - so, we don't do the steps one after each other, we do them at the same time."

Some political parties have been meeting since the election but with the result "too close to call" have largely delayed negotiations for forming a government until the final vote count.

But Edgeler said there was no need, pointing to John Key's first government formed in 2008.

"With the Māori Party as it then was, with United Future, and with ACT, they form a four-party [government], John Key is sworn in as prime minister and announces government ministers before the final count is released. There is nothing stopping politicians from starting their negotiations now if they want."

He said with the result so close, they probably should wait until the final count before announcing a government, but National could be talking to both ACT and NZ First at least - and with Opportunity having promised to talk first to the party with the most seats, to Qiulae Wong's negotiating team as well.

"National, plus ACT, plus NZ First, plus Opportunity - even if the special votes go badly for the government ... it seems it's almost inconceivable based on historic patterns of special votes that group of four parties would not be a majority.

"It's just a question of whether the three opposition parties and Opportunity could also form - but given that Opportunity said they want to speak to the largest party first, based on the votes we have, that is almost certainly the National Party."

For the impatient, changes are coming for future elections that would help speed the process up.

Le Quesne said the commission would soon be trialling a new digital roll mark-off system.

"Instead of having a paper-based roll in every voting place, you could have a electronic roll and you mark people off by scanning a barcode on their Easy Vote card.

"That would make it much quicker to produce that one roll for each electorate, but it would also help you to avoid people voting more than once because you'd be able to identify straight away that they'd voted in another voting place."

Edgeler also pointed to changes that had passed the legislative hurdles but were not installed in time for the 2026 election, which would automatically change someone's enrolment when they changed details like their address with other agencies like Work and Income, or the Transport Agency.

"That information will be passed along to the Electoral Commission who will just say 'okay, this person was enrolled here, they've moved, we're going to change their enrolment'.

"The system we currently have is that information will be passed to the Electoral Commission and they'll write to you saying 'oh, it looks like you've moved, could you please enrol?'".

He said that would significantly reduce the number of special votes from people who had moved but forgot or delayed updates to their enrolment, as they would be ordinary votes instead, "which will mean the amount of time needed to check special votes will be significantly less".