Days after a judge voided a South Auckland election result over voter fraud claims, the private company running Auckland’s polls has admitted to a separate privacy breach.
Electoral Services managing director Dale Ofsoske said election results containing confidential information about special voters were released to West Auckland councillor Ken Turner.
He also said there were issues with missing ballot box data, but stressed it had no impact on the election result.
As a member of the WestWards ticket that stood candidates in West Auckland, Turner requested the final results from Election Services for the Waitākere ward and Waitākere Ranges and Henderson-Massey Local Boards.
Once the breach was picked up, said Ofsoske, a replacement file of the results without the details of special voters was provided to Turner on the same day and he was asked to delete the first file.
Ofsoske told the Herald a software glitch, now being fixed, was to blame. The matter was immediately reported to the Privacy Commission, with Auckland Council subsequently advised, he said.
The incident follows Judge Richard McIlraith’s finding that some irregularities affected the election result for the Papatoetoe subdivision of the Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board.
A new election will be held to ensure the integrity of the democratic process and maintain public confidence in the election result.
The case was brought by the board’s former deputy chairman Vi Hausia, who alleged widespread theft of voting papers, fraudulent use of stolen voting ballots and other “irregularities”.
In a statement, the Privacy Commission said Election Services had been in contact about the privacy incident.
“We will continue to work with them as they investigate further the privacy breach, including ensuring they are aware of their legal obligations in relation to a privacy breach that either has caused or is likely to cause anyone serious harm,” said the statement. The commission expected Election Services to provide any further information it wished to share.
Turner acknowledged the first file included confidential details of special voters, among them people vulnerable to harassment, but he still held concerns about how the election was run in West Auckland.
His concerns centred on the high number of invalid special votes, the lack of transparency for special voters about whether their ballots were valid and missing ballot box data.
One document provided to Turner by Election Services showed zero votes were received at seven voting boxes in West Auckland.
Ofsoske said this was because each voting box should have contained a numbered tag, but several were lost or not used. As a result, Election Services was unable to account for the number of votes received from all locations.
Ofsoske and Auckland Council’s governance general manager Lou-Ann Ballantyne said all voting envelopes dropped into the vote boxes in Auckland were collected and counted.
“I want to make it abundantly clear that all votes in West Auckland were counted and contributed to the final results for elected representatives in this area,” Ballantyne said.
She said running an election across a region as large and diverse as Auckland was not easy. While issues occasionally arose because of unforeseen circumstances, they were rare and usually resolved quickly. In this case, there had been no impact on the election outcome.
On the issue of special votes, Ofsoske said 9306 were received across Auckland at October’s local body elections, of which 6040 (65%) were valid and counted and 3266 (35%) were invalid.
Special votes were generally invalid in cases where a person had not updated their address details, was not enrolled, or had resided at a new address for less than the one‑month statutory period; where the special vote declaration was incomplete; and where a person had already voted.
“If a special vote is invalid/not counted, we do not advise the elector of this as it is not a legislative requirement,” Ofsoske said.
Turner said special voters had no way of knowing whether their ballots were valid. He and fellow WestWards candidate Angus Cathcart, who cast a special vote without knowing if it counted, believed it was time to abandon postal voting.
“The election results must be reliable. We need to have confidence in what is taking place. Nobody has confidence in the postal system because it is based on a service on its last legs,” said Turner.
Cathcart said: “People fought and died for the right to vote. Today, with postal deliveries limited to three days a week and very few post boxes available, many give up, and it’s easy to see why. We must return to in‑person voting.”
Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.