Election 2020: WikiProject page elects candidate ahead of voting day

Prospective voters seeking information on Tukituki Labour candidate Anna Lorck may read that she has already been elected.

A search of Anna Lorck in Google reveals a Wikipedia/WikiProject draft article written, updated and published by a group called New Zealand politics task force, which mentions her winning the seat in the 2020 election, an election yet to be held.

Once the page is opened, it is clear that it is a draft and "may be incomplete and/or unreliable".

It also says the draft is only likely to be published as a Wikipedia article if the person wins the election.

The article says Lorck is "a New Zealand politician who was elected to the New Zealand Parliament at the 2020 general election as the member of Parliament for the Tukituki electorate of the New Zealand Labour Party".

"At the 2020 general election, Lorck was selected as the Labour candidate for Tukituki for the third time," it says.

"She was given the Labour Party's endorsement to run a local MP campaign and this time unseated Yule and returned the electorate to Labour or Lorck failed to capture the Tukituki electorate and returned to local politics."

After reading the page Lorck told Hawke's Bay Today that it was not her page, and she had no control over it.

"But if Wikipedia has me winning the election then fingers crossed they are right," she said.

"However, I am not taking anything for granted and I am working very hard to be elected as Tukituki MP.

"At a Rotary meeting last week it was introduced as light-hearted humour."

Tukituki MP Lawrence Yule said he was not going to lose any sleep over it.

"Whoever has done this is getting a bit ahead of themselves," he said.

"It's not a biggie for me but I would make it correct if it was me. It's a minor detail which needs to be corrected by whoever posted it, publically available information needs to be accurate.

"The 2020 elections haven't taken place yet, so it would not be possible that she unseated me."

In response to the publically available page an Electoral Commission spokeswoman said it was not something they would look into.

"If someone has concerns about content on Wikipedia being incorrect they should go through Wikipedia's channels to raise the issue and have it amended," she said.