The probe follows irregularities found at other polling stations.
Labour have officially lodged a recount request for the Tamaki Makaurau Maori electorate, reports Te Ao News. The probe will investigate wider questions of vote ‘treating’ and conflicts of interest. Advertising by the marae included the promise of ‘free food’ for voters, while it also emerged that Maori party candidate Takutai Moana Kemp is also the marae’s Chief Executive.
In official results so far, Labour’s Peeni Henare lost the seat to Kemp by just four votes. Henare held a 495 vote lead on election night.
A spokesperson for the commission told Te Ao News that they had, ‘received complaints about activities at the Manurewa Marae, including whether the provision of food could be considered treating… We have also received a complaint about the Electoral Commission’s use of the Manurewa Marae as a voting place.’
A source in the Labour Party told Te Ao News that having a polling booth ‘in close proximity’ to a running candidate raised ‘questions about the integrity of the electoral process. ‘She’s the CEO of the marae, and the candidate? How does that work?’, the source said.
The controversy follows a series of irregularities found at other polling stations, requiring the commission to issue ‘amended official results’ yesterday. The commission summarised the changes in a press release.
Amended Official Results of the 2023 General Election
‘Checks of party, electorate and special votes have been completed and there are no changes to the overall results, successful candidates or allocation of seats,’ the press release read.
‘On Tuesday 7 November the Commission announced it had found three voting places where there were data entry errors for the party vote results.
‘The following additional data entry errors have been found.
- 15 voting places with data entry errors resulting in small changes for electorate candidate results.
- One electorate where the data for a small number of special votes had been entered incorrectly.
- Five voting places entered election day votes as advance voting. This did not affect the total numbers of votes for parties or candidates.
‘620 votes in the East Coast electorate that were included in the preliminary count were not included in the official count. The votes were in a ballot box at the electorate headquarters and were missed during the official count. The votes have now been counted and added to the electorate totals.
‘Corrections have been made, resulting in 693 votes being added to the total number of party votes cast in the election. Candidate votes have increased by 708. Turnout remains unchanged at 78.2%.’
None of these errors affect the electorates where judicial recounts are underway.
“There are quality assurance steps across the counting, data entry and reporting processes that have been applied. People should have confidence in the integrity of the official count and the amended results,” says Karl Le Quesne, Chief Electoral Officer.
“We have corrected the errors found. These are small in scale and do not affect the overall results or allocation of seats. We apologise for these errors. It is disappointing they were not picked up in the quality assurance processes and falls short of our expectations,” says Karl Le Quesne.
“The Electoral Commission board will commission an independent review of the quality assurance processes in place and what improvements can be made to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” says Jane Meares, Acting Board Chair.
Next steps
The amended results will be published in the New Zealand Gazette yesterday.
Judicial recounts are to be held in the Nelson, Mt Albert and Tāmaki Makaurau electorates.
After the recounts, the Electoral Commission will return the writ to the Clerk of the House of Representatives, allocate list seats in the presence of party scrutineers and declare by Gazette Notice the election of list members of Parliament.
Wasn’t it Hipkins who was offering free hand j***
for votes in his constituency? Free food does sound a lot better than that though.
From the party that often appears to hate democratic things like free speech, unless its to their benefit….of course…….
More fake nonsense.
It used to be “There are absolutely ZERO problems with electronic voting”
To
“There were a few issues, but it didn’t affect anything, and look we totally corrected it”
Because they realise option 2 is slightly more believable to the fast asleep. We’re supposed to magically forget that ALL parties answer to the same globalist masters. We’re supposed to magically forget how they ALL supported lockdowns and mandates and vax passports, how they ALL support climate change nonsense. It’s almost at the point where they all might as well just become one party.
Your vote TOTALLY matters though, everything is TOTALLY not fake 😉👍
Please 😑
Yes it is business as usual. There has never been a Politician in NZ that is not corrupt since the invention of ‘cell phones’. They all realised that a medium became available for them to enrich themselves with beyond their wildest dreams. Since then they have become a hypocritical bunch of self seving free loading individuals at the expense of the public purse they control.. All legal Woopee !!! They just have to do as their Global masters demand and live Utopia. Sorry NZ you have been sold down the road many many many years ago. Exit to Portugal Mexico Bulgaria Russia or Antartica with the penquins NZ is toast.