Southland District Council mayoral candidate Kirsty Pickett fears many people’s votes might never be counted and they won’t ever know it, thanks to inefficiencies in the Electoral Commission’s systems for

delivering and receiving ballot papers.

She is urging voters, particularly in rural electorates, to hand deliver their ballot papers to their local council office if they want assurance that their vote will be counted.

“All of the correspondence we’ve been sent encourages us to post our votes ‘no later than Tuesday 4th October’ but many people probably haven’t noticed the small print on the return envelope that says your

returned voting document ‘must be in the hands of the Electoral Officer by 12 midday, 8 October’. What this means is, regardless of what date your vote is posted, if it doesn’t get to the Electoral Officer in Christchurch in time, you might as well not have bothered.”

Ballot papers were supposed to have been received by voters between the 16th and 21st of September but Pickett says many people got them after that date and some are still yet to receive them.

“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.

“The Electoral Commission is trying to encourage people to vote because they’re worried about low voter turnout, but we could well have people voting in good faith whose votes won’t be counted because they

were supposedly late. Worse still, if the late votes aren’t accounted for in some way (such as informal votes), there is no way of knowing how many people actually tried to engage in the voting process, thereby having potential to totally skew the voter turnout figures.”

“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’.

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

“My own papers only arrived on Friday and that was obviously thanks to our local postie going above and beyond as our next delivery day would not normally have been until Saturday. The delivery delays are

presumably further exacerbated by the addition of today’s Queen’s Memorial Holiday, with no postal deliveries that day.”

Messaging in the voting packs is weighted heavily towards people posting their votes back. There’s a QR code in the voting pack directing people to their nearest post box, but not the same navigational links for where people’s nearest council office for delivery is.

“That’s unfair, particularly to people living in rural electorates, such as Southland.”

“The only way you will know for certain that your vote has been received and will be counted is to hand deliver it to your local council office. I know what I am calling for has potential to cause huge disruption to

the systems currently in place, but people must be able to have confidence in the democratic process.”

The Independent Electoral Review established by the Minister of Justice can’t come soon enough and I encourage people to engage in that process and give their feedback. But in the meantime, we need some

answers now – what percentage of voting packs were not delivered within the specified timeframes, and what will happen to those votes postmarked the recommended 4th October or earlier that arrive late?”

* Disclaimer: Kirsty Pickett is a co-owner of The Southland App, but the publication has editorial independence and will treat all candidates equally.