70,000 blank votes cast in local elections

Len Brown. Photo / Steven McNicholl

Thousands of blank and invalid ballots were cast in this month's Super City elections.

Blank votes would have placed fourth in the city's highly publicised Mayoral race with 4073 - more than the total votes for candidates including North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams and theatre boss Simon Prast.

When informal, or wrongly filled out, votes are added in the figure rises to 5377.

Total blank votes from the Mayoral, Council and Local Board elections added up to 75,688.

Those figures were even higher in District Health Board elections.

Nearly 25 per cent of the Auckland District Health Board election votes were invalid, with 26,710 blank and 11,265 wrongly filled out ballots among the 154,656 total votes.

There were 19714 blank and 9674 informal votes out of a total 154,493 votes for Counties-Manukau District Health Board.

Waitemata District Health Board had 21,450 blank and 11,628 informal among its 147,973 votes.

Those figures speak of voter apathy, particularly outside of the Mayoral race, says Auckland electoral officer Dale Ofsoske.

"A lot of people just wanted to vote for the Mayoral stoush. There are people that tick every box and fill everything out but there are some that just don't really care. And of course there are the 49.5 per cent that simply threw their vote out."

He is also concerned about the high number of informal votes in the health board elections.

"A lot of people didn't read the form and kept on ticking. Some people started ranking a candidate as 2 instead of 1. Those had be thrown out."