The anatomy of a shambles

By Eugene Bingham and Alison Horwood


Sleepy Himatangi Beach has become famous as the town democracy deserted.

More than the unnecessary queues in polling places and the long delays in counting votes, the scandal of the 100 ballot papers missing from the lower North Island beach community demonstrated that this election was a shambles.

The United Nations will be brought in to monitor our elections in future, they joked in Wellington this week.

But to the people of Himatangi, whose political voice was muted through no fault of their own, it is no joking matter.

"We're little, but we're loud," said pensioner Adoree Anderson."Our votes should be important."

The calls for action began the day after the election, when Prime Minister Helen Clark lost no time in slamming the way things were done.

Her campaign manager, Mike Williams, says his first sense that things were not going to run smoothly was at 9 am when he went to vote at a Ponsonby booth. A man in front of him was from the Tukituki electorate and wanted to cast a special vote, but the facilities were not ready.

"He gave up, and I doubt he bothered to vote," said Mr Williams.

"There's been elections held since the 1860s and never a breath of scandal and then, suddenly, this. It's a lack of training, a lack of experience. It's an election run on the cheap."

So who did run the show, and how well prepared were they?

Phil Whelan is the Chief Electoral Officer, and he and 11 staff are in charge. Under them are returning officers for each of the 67 electorates.

About 14,600 staff work on polling day in the 3200 polling places.

This year, their training at most consisted of a two-hour session and a handbook. The session, though, was only compulsory for supervising staff, including deputy returning officers.

As a result, some supervisors complained about ill-prepared poll clerks turning up on the day with limited knowledge of what to do.

Though many staff had worked on previous elections, the sorting and counting system had changed, and an additional tally sheet was introduced.

Mostly, though, the procedures were similar to those used in pre-MMP days. After the 1996 election, a parliamentary inquiry heard submissions from groups calling for changes to reflect the switch to MMP. But MPs rejected the calls, saying the present system had a high level of integrity and could not be changed overnight.

The Chief Electoral Office was keen on the idea of electronic voting after the last election.

A system was used in the 1997 superannuation referendum, and there was talk of trying one in the general election, but nothing eventuated.

Auckland University political scientist Dr Raymond Miller believes we may be getting hysterical about the delays in counting, but he does agree the system is "a bit old-fashioned."

"I'm not a computing expert, but I would have thought there would be some sort of computerised counting system in place by the end of the 20th century."

He says many people who are upset about the delays are underestimating the drag the two referendum questions imposed. And he expects more in future years.

"People will save them up and do them at election time, because it is more efficient."

The Hauraki returning officer, Jack Harris, also cites the referendums as the complicating factor.

He also blames the high number of special votes for much of the problem. Whereas an ordinary vote takes about a minute, a special vote takes four.

People who enrol in the 28 days before the election (this year there were 57,143) each cast a special vote, as do people who vote outside their electorate.

Large events attracting thousands of people cause a particular complication.

In Auckland Central (where only 74 per cent of the vote had been counted by midday on Sunday), the America's Cup was among the attractions drawing people from all over, many of whom decided to vote while they were there.

As a result, there were 7000 special votes in the seat.

The America's Cup crowds were catered for at only one extra polling place, in Hobson St.

In Taupo, organisers of the Round Taupo Bike Race cooperated with returning officer Terry Coley by sending out information to the 4000 competitors encouraging them to vote at home.

Still, more than 5500 people cast special votes in Taupo.

An expert on overseas voting systems, Dr Helena Catt, of Auckland University, agrees that it seems odd we can wander into any polling booth and vote. In Britain, for instance, voters are told which booth to vote at.

While she believes people are unnecessarily upset by the slowness of the counting on election night - "Nobody else is so obsessed with speed" - she does think the special-votes system needs looking at.

"If we are going to question things, we should question special votes - and do we need 10 days to move them around the country?"

The Australians gloat that their system delivers an indicative result within three hours.

"That result is normally pretty fail-safe, although there have been a couple of occasions where we've had to wait for special votes," says Brien Hallett, of the Australian Electoral Commission.

For Dr Miller, the most annoying problem was the slowness of the special-vote count in Tauranga.

"The whole country is on tenterhooks and the whole balance of the Parliament is late in being decided because a few people in Tauranga are counting the votes."

The reason for that particular delay is as simple as the fact that different electorates adopted different work practices when it came to the post-election period.

In Coromandel, for instance, staff worked through the weekend completing the official count and started counting the special votes at 1 pm on Tuesday.

In Tauranga, however, staff decided to have the weekend off, and so they did not finish the official count until Wednesday morning.

Only at 10 am did they begin counting the special votes.