By Russell Palmer of RNZ
Wellington barrister Graeme Edgeler says the National leader's suggestion of speeding up the final vote count is not fair, but daily count updates could work.
Incoming Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today told Morning Report three weeks was too long for counting special votes, and called for the system to be looked at again.
"What we're saying is that we're beholden to a system that doesn't deliver, doesn't count a fifth of our votes until three weeks after an election."
"I just think three weeks is way too long to count special votes, I think that needs to be sped up."
However, those three weeks taken by the commission include more than just counting the special votes.
The Electoral Commission's chief electoral officer Karl Le Quesne said the full declaration of the official results included several other steps.
"We begin by updating the electoral rolls and processing all the enrolments and updates from before and on election day. We compare all the electoral rolls from voting places to check if anyone has voted more than once, and investigate dual votes.
"We also check and count special votes. By law, we need to allow 10 days for special votes to be returned from overseas and 13 days for special votes cast in New Zealand to be returned to their home electorate. Before any special votes can be added to the count, the declarations of all special voters must be checked to ensure the voter is eligible and enrolled.
"During the official count, all advance and election day ordinary votes counted on election day are recounted by hand a second time. Special votes that have been checked for eligibility are counted. Comprehensive audit checks have to be completed at the national level to ensure the results are accurate."
He said staff had been working long hours and weekends to ensure the results were released on time.
"The 20-day timeframe for the official count is the same as it was in 2020."
Edgeler has written about the process before, and said the final count was basically an audit of the election, aiming for a complete and accurate accounting of all votes.
He said the vote-counting part typically only took a few days - it was the checks and balances that took up most of the effort.
"Counting votes will be two or three days. The rest of it is checking votes ... you know: This voting place got handed 40 pads of voting papers for Wellington Central or something like that, but got 40 stubs back, and this stub has 12 voting papers left in it and, you know, how many voting papers did it issue? How many voting papers are there?"
This was to ensure it had not been miscounted or subject to fraud.
Edgeler said the timeframe had also been extended by a week after the 2017 elections because of the change that allowed people to vote on election day.
"It used to be you could you could enrol any day up until the day before the election, but not on election day itself."
He said this was not just to make voting more accessible, it also meant anyone who - for whatever reason - had not realised they weren't enrolled would not have their votes discarded if they voted on election day.
"Some, perhaps ... they should have sent a form in when they when they moved, or perhaps the letter got returned by mistake or something like that and they did get removed from the electoral roll - those votes in 2017 and before would not be counted.
"Thousands of people who thought they were entitled to vote and tried to vote and turned up to a voting place and cast a special vote didn't have their votes counted, and so I think it was a good change - but as part of the process of that change, we extended the amount of time allowed for the return of the writ."
Daily counts and local government elections
Luxon had some other suggestions for making changes to the Electoral Commission too.
"I do think the release of daily counts would be helpful," he said.
"And I also think, frankly, the Electoral Commission doing local government elections - so that they have muscle memory to handle the general elections - would be all good questions to ask in due course around the Electoral Commission."
Edgeler said he saw no reason not to have a daily count of the votes.
"I mean, the first few days, we're not actually counting the votes, it's not gonna make much difference. But, yes, I think that is practical.
"My understanding is we used to do it. They certainly do something like that in Australia during the official count. And so I don't see why we couldn't do it in New Zealand."
Le Quesne said the Electoral Commission followed the Electoral Act for producing the official results.
"The law makes it clear that the results can only be released when all the ballot papers for an electorate have been processed, including special votes.
"The results are signed off by a Justice of the Peace and the returning officer for the electorate before they are reported to the Electoral Commission. The results for each electorate and the nationwide party vote are then released together."
Le Quesne said it was up to Parliament to make changes if they wanted to make the commission responsible for local government elections.
"The Electoral Commission's role is set by legislation and we are currently responsible for running parliamentary elections and keeping the electoral rolls up to date. It's up to Parliament to decide if it wants to broaden the Commission's mandate."
Edgeler said the suggestion was a good one, but it would be helpful for the local government elections rather than the general election.
"I think it's unrelated to the processes that have been going now, that there have been a number of problems with the way that we run local elections, but I think that's a good idea.
"Local elections are the ones that lack the muscle memory. For the people who run the Electoral Commission, they know how these audits work ... the idea that will improve general election processes is probably sort of missing the point."
The final election result is due on Friday 3 November about 2pm.
RNZ
