This case may not seem a big deal given that it involves just 79 votes, in just one subdivision, in just one relatively small local board election in Auckland.
But the 79 may just be the tip of the iceberg. It may be that hundreds of ballot papers in that subdivision were stolen from letterboxes, filled in and sent in as legit votes.
Now Ken Turner from the Waitakere's is also considering legal options because he reckons something funny happened with 212 votes in his election too.
None of this is a surprise to me because years ago when friends of mine were flatting, as happens, mail turned up for previous tenants.
Some of that mail was voting papers. So my friends filled the papers in and sent them all back in as legitimate votes and no one ever got in trouble for it.
We all know the mail voting system is ripe for being gamed.
But perhaps in our naivety we hadn’t imagined it would go from a bunch of silly flatties to what seems like may have been an orchestrated rigging of an election.
Postal voting should go the way of the horse and cart. It's not the only reason so many of us can’t be bothered with council elections, but it is a significant part of it.
You get the mail, pop it on the counter, forget about it, find it after election day is well past, or find it too hard to remember where to find a post box.
Not only does it make it harder to vote, it also makes it harder to trust the election outcome.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show. This article was sourced from Newstalk ZB.
5 comments:
Heather, you've highlighted a crucial issue; the vulnerabilities in postal voting could undermine public trust in elections, and it’s time to reconsider this method.
Mass voting for people of whom you know nothing is much like the bread and circuses of the late Roman Empire. That didn’t go well either.
This country needs to return to in-person voting, at a polling booth, and on a specific day, as used to be the case.
It's abundantly clear that postal voting has had its day, most particularly because it can be rorted, as we've seen.
And online voting has yet to be proven feasible, let alone safe, from a privacy perspective.
I think Postal voting was pushed by those wanting more people to vote???
My response why? Fo rmany it becomes a raffle.
Going to a polling booth requires commitment and hopefully some understanding"of the policies and parties involved,
Postal voting in many cases is by those who dont have a clue and tend to vote for the names they recognise.
Blaming postal voting for the corrupt predilections of our south east asian communities is like blaming the Internet for Islamic terrorism.
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