Up to 500 duplicate Denby voting papers sent out

The identical voting papers sent to the same Denby Ward voter that have raised concerns about the possibility of some electors voting twice in the byelection.

Up to 500 Denby Ward voters may have been sent duplicate voting forms, but the situation won't invalidate the vote and nobody will be able to vote twice.

Several voters in the Denby Ward byelection contacted the Northern Advocate this week after they received two identical voting forms in the mail.

Dale Ofsoske, from Election Service, which runs the byelection for Whangarei District Council, said he was aware of nine voters who had received identical voting papers, but there could be up to 500.

Mr Ofsoske said after being contacted by voters about receiving identical papers he visited the printer that produced the forms to find out how it happened.

"They printed the forms in batches of 500 at a time and it appears that one of these batches may have ben printed twice," Mr Ofsoske said.

"So the potential is that there may have been 500 duplicated, that's the worst case scenario, but we're only aware of nine that have been received so far out of the almost 14,000 sent out."

He said the situation would not invalidate the byelection or the elector's vote.

"If people have received two duplicate forms they should use one to vote with and just rip the other one up," Mr Ofsoske said.

He said there was no chance of people being able to vote twice if they received duplicate forms. Voting forms have a specific barcode and once scanned a second barcode with identical features would not be recognised by the electronic system.

How the error happened, and exactly how many duplicate forms were sent out, is being investigated.