There are reasons to doubt the result of the 2023 election. I say this having been a campaign organiser or candidate in 14 general elections, and also having been a UN official international election observer.
Countries ensure that only qualified electors vote by requiring voters to register before theelection, giving their name, address and occupation. The electoral roll is published to enable public scrutiny.
My team would take the electoral roll door-to-door. We would find discrepancies and occasional electoral fraud. We found 18 people falsely enrolled at one address. It is the publishing of the roll that ensures the integrity of the election.
In 2020, the Jacinda Ardern-led Government enacted election-day enrolment. Now, on election day, with no proof of ID or address, anyone can sign a declaration, enrol, and vote.
In my view, Labour pushed through the change believing that the disorganised are Labour supporters. It turns out that they are Green and Te Pāti Māori voters.
It is impossible to check the eligibility of electors whose names and addresses are secret until after they have voted.
There are over a quarter of a million adults in New Zealand who are not eligible to vote: visa-holders, tourists, foreign students and overstayers among them. Only citizens and permanent residents may vote, and only for the electorate where they live.
Despite having almost two weeks to vote, an extraordinary number of people go to the inconvenience of special voting in an electorate where they are not enrolled. The suspicion is that many have changed addresses, have not updated their enrolment, and are illegally voting in their old electorate. I know two electors who voted using their old address.
Then there is electorate tourism: people who enrol and vote in an electorate where they do not live. A former Green Party leader admitted she once enrolled using a friend’s address so she could vote in Auckland Central.
Many people have more than one address. They do not have a choice. They must only enrol and vote where they mainly live. Having represented two university electorates, I know electorate tourism occurs. Election-day enrolment has made electorate tourism easy.
Fear of electoral fraud is why electronic voting is not permitted, except for those voting from overseas. But if electronic voting is inherently unsafe, then there must be doubts over the electronic votes from overseas.
It is likely that National candidates in Nelson, Te Atatū and Mt Albert who narrowly lost after the special vote count won more valid votes. It is likely that Peeni Henare and Kelvin Davis really won Tamaki Mākaurau and Te Tai Tokerau.
There is no other country that lets people with no ID enrol and vote on election day. We are the only country where 20.9 per cent of the total votes cast are special votes.
No one knows how many of the 603,257 special votes are fraudulent.
We need to know whether election-day enrolment is empowering participation in democracy or destroying the integrity. Photo / Bevan Conley
The shift of a handful of votes could change the election result. The Green Party received one-third of their votes from specials, which boosted the number of Green MPs. The special votes decreased National’s MP count by two. Special votes enabled Te Pāti Māori to win two electorates. It is possible that if only valid ballots were counted, National and Act together won the election.
The three recounts are not a check. Recounts are just a check that the ballots have been counted correctly and do not check whether those ballots are legitimate. The District Court Judge in the Nelson recount said, “I did not inspect the declarations of the 6248 votes which were counted”. The judge said it was impractical.
The judge said that the careful way a few ballots were disallowed meant that “there was no reason to believe that any of the counted special votes should have been disallowed”.
The 147 special votes disallowed in Nelson were disallowed for form, such as failing to sign the declaration. There was no check on whether the 6248 people who special voted were entitled to vote.
It is vital that at least one electoral petition is filed with the High Court. The High Court can examine the validity of the ballots. Consideration also needs to be given to filing a High Court petition to challenge the party vote. A party vote challenge would be a mammoth task, but what is at stake is not just this election, but all future elections.
An electoral petition will help determine whether the present special voting arrangements are worth the cost of having a caretaker Government for a month or more.
We need to know whether election-day enrolment is empowering participation in democracy, or whether election-day enrolment is destroying the integrity of our elections.
- Richard Prebble is a former leader of the Act Party and a former member of the Labour Party.
