Emma Hart is being picky. You just needed to say that "scutineers" are the party people sitting there like stuffed chocks to keep everything honest. It is the electoral staff who make a note linking the person to the numbered voting paper is case it needs to be retrieved. It is interesting to learn that they do not have the capacity to find the associated referendum paper.

I worked in Wellington. We had heaps of special votes from people previously enrolled in Christchurch, some of them students. If they had been living in a Wellington electorate for more than a month they were given the choice of where to vote. More then half chose to vote in the Wellington electorate rather than Christchurch. At least with MMP the nationwide percentage rules overall.

As for waiting for the final referendum count, it is interesting to see that the national count of 287,000 advance votes was incredibly close to the total count. In earlier times, absentee votes always favoured National but no longer.http://www.electionresults.govt.nz/electionresults_2011/partystatus-early.html