Posts by Rachel Prosser
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Also, the margin of error for double votes in a referendum - which is counted nationwide - was such that a tie is more unlikely.
Statisticians may come to the rescue on that.
BTW - who knows the probability of a tie with 14593 votes each?
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Did anyone cast a referendum vote without at the same time casting an election vote where the usual protections applied?
The only way this could happen would be if they chose not to vote with the first paper and smuggled it out without the polling staff picking up on it. Training for polling place staff was very clear - don't hand over either vote individually - hand them both over together.
Admittedly, this was in part to stop people grabbing their parliamentary vote and hightailing it for the screens without collecting the referendum paper - much more likely scenario was that people didn't want to vote in the referendum (there were scripting guides on the back of the table sign to help the issuing officer answer that very question)
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Legal Beagle: Election '11: the special votes, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Yup – and it’s also worth remembering that New Zealand does things like this because our electoral system is internationally respected and the results taken seriously. Getting the basics of a credible election result done right rather than done right now is important in ways far beyond the obvious.
I agree. Having been a special/ordinary vote issuing officer (although it may have been titled "poll clerk") before I left to go to the UK I was astonished at elements of the UK electoral system.
First up:, the result is final on the night. No judicial recounts.
Further, whereas our system places a premium on making sure everyone who is entitled to vote can, their system has as an underlying principle that it's important to avoid fraud, and innocent voters being deprived of their vote comes second.
Case in point: a British MP didn't get to vote in one election as a clerical error (which absolutely everyone involved agreed was a clerical error) meant his voting paper was despatched to someone one line above or below him on the electoral roll who wanted to cast an advance vote. Unless that ballot paper could be retrieved (from Norfolk from memory), he couldn't vote. At all.
Legal advice was that the rules specified what could happen, and there was no provision for the returning officer to correct obvious mistakes.
Depriving someone of one of their fundamental rights as a citizen was a lesser concern than preventing double voting.
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It is a bit annoying, I enrolled a month ago and still had to cast a special vote on the day.
If you enrolled a month ago - 26 October - you would have just missed out, as the rolls were printed on 25 October.
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I think the bulk of the special votes may be people in my position rather than advance and out of electorate votes.
Yes you're correct - the highest number of special votes within any electorate are likely to be for that electorate - for the unpublished roll, and late enrolments, plus take-home votes.
But Christchurch Central's diaspora of residents temporarily resident elsewhere may mean that there are more special votes than normal coming there from elsewhere.
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Further to Paul's question again:
Have just realised, the fact that there were 3,717 special votes received at polling places within Christchurch Central doesn't mean that there are 3717 votes to be split between candidates in that electorate.
Some of them will be - they'll be Special Votes issued to Christchurch Central voters who were late to enrol, or on the unpublished roll etc. But many of those 3717 will be for other electorates.
Conversely, people from Christchurch Central who voted, e.g. in Auckland Central will have had their special vote listed in the results as being received in Auckland Central.
So at this stage, there's no knowing how many special votes there will be for Christchurch Central until the electoral machine moves a step or two further on over the next 2 weeks.
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Legal Beagle: Election '11: the special votes, in reply to Paul Williams,
From a quick and partial look, there’s no specials in the Maori seats, that seems odd to me. Perhaps they’re just not counted?
It’s a function of how the special votes are recorded. There aren’t any wholly Maori Polling Places. Each Polling Place will also have at least one General electorate.
Polling Places were asked to report how many Special Votes were returned to that polling place, and for administrative simplicity, this was always returned on the return for the home General Electorate (i.e. anything cast in any polling place in Wellington Central will list all the Special Votes that went into the Special Vote ballot box – for any electorate – in that polling place)
Which means, and I’ve just realised this, that when it says e.g. 3000 special votes in the Wellington Central, that means that polling places in Wellington Central took in 3000 special votes, not that there were 3000 special votes for Wellington Central.
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Advance votes, specials votes done before election day?
Advance votes were a mix of advance Ordinary Votes, and advance Special Votes.
E.g. for polling places in downtown Wellington you could cast an ordinary vote for Wellington Central, Hutt South, Rimutaka, Ohariu, Mana, Rongotai or Te Tai Tonga (catering for all the commuters who come into Wellington).
You could also cast an advance Special vote if you were enrolled in another electorate - e.g. if you were visiting from Auckland Central.
The Advance Ordinary Parliamentary votes were counted yesterday between 2pm and 7pm (in locked rooms guarded by a security guard), no cellphones allowed.
The Advance Referendum Votes for those who cast advance Ordinary Votes were also counted yesterday afternoon.
The Advance Special Votes (and the referendum votes for those who cast special votes) will be counted with all the other special votes later.Counting the special votes is a more involved, 2-stage process, where first the envelopes are sent to the home Returning Officer, declarations are checked to make sure the voter is on the roll, before the other side of the envelope is opened, the referendum and parliamentary votes extracted, and then counted.
It's correct to say that the Referendum votes by and large have not been counted - only the ones cast by people who cast an advanced Ordinary Vote have been.
I've no idea what the pattern will be - I've been so busy as an election trainer focussing on the process of voting that I've paid next to no attention to the campaign.
Was very surprised though, to come home, and find so little analysis online from stuff and nzherald - no list of who was in/out or on the margins. I presume TV had all that.
What there was was some glaring inaccuracies - like saying that 1/3 of the people who voted for change voted informally in part 2, when everyone had the chance to vote in part 2.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Oriental Bay Band Rotunda was also available for Oriental Bay.
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Glad to see that this excellent play has made it into the theatre - I hope it's well attended, and that there's a Wellington season to follow.
I saw it as a rehearsed reading at the Court Theatre a year or two or three back, and enjoyed it then.