Candidate fears postal ‘delays’ risk votes being missed

A Southland District mayoral candidate is concerned votes may not be counted in time because of delays in getting voting packs out to rural voters.

Candidate Kirsty Pickett, who lives in Te Anau, said her voting papers arrived on September 23. The deadline for voting papers to be sent out was September 21.

Registered voters are instructed on their voting papers to post their votes back no later than October 4 or hand-deliver to the council by midday on October 8.

But for Pickett, the initial delay in getting votes delivered to ratepayers cast some doubt about the votes being counted after the election day deadline.

Many people, that she was aware of, got their voting forms late and some were still to receive them, she said.

‘‘Based on the time it’s taken to have the ballot papers sent out, there is no way that people can be assured their votes posted on or before the recommended last day of 4th of October will even be counted,’’ Pickett said.

‘‘If systems are inefficient and fail to deliver within deadlines it lowers trust in the system. The minute we lower trust in the system people stop voting,’’ she said.

Local Government New Zealand says its vision is ‘for Aotearoa to be the most active and inclusive local democracy in the world’, Pickett said.

‘‘How can that be achieved when people have no certainty about whether their vote will even be counted?’’ Pickett said.

She encouraged people to handdeliver votes to council offices to ensure they were counted.

However, Te Anau resident Jan Ludemann, who runs a media consulting business, said she was surprised that when she went to drop her vote into the town’s council office on Wednesday, she and her husband were told the votes would just be posted anyway.

Southland District Council electoral officer Robyn Rout said ‘‘very little feedback’’ had been received that voting papers were received late, but also acknowledged there was no way of measuring how many might have been late.

Voting papers clearly outlined when they needed to be in the post by, and this allowed time for the papers to get to the electoral officer before voting closed, Rout said.

Any votes received after the cutoff are not counted. Instead, they are held at a District Court for a minimum of 21 days until after the date that a judicial recount can be made.

NZ Post mail general manager Matt Geor said based on feedback from delivery teams nationwide, delivery of voter packs to the 3.5 million eligible and enrolled voters was completed by September 21.

On the morning of election day, each mail centre would get a final sweep, with ‘‘every nook and cranny’’ searched for votes, Geor said.

Yesterday, Invercargill City Council deputy electoral officer Michael Morris said voters would need to deliver their votes by hand from Monday (October 3) ‘‘as time runs out for postal votes’’.