Public Address | Cafe | Legal Beagle: Election 2014: The Special Votes

Graeme Edgeler

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 14:41:14 +1300

Keith, following answers are all as the answer would differ from the final result:

Scenario 1: IM would get two seats, National and Greens down one each.
Scenario 2: Maori Party gains one seat. Size of House increases to 122 (additional overhang).
Scenario 3: IM would get two seats, National…

David Hood

Mon, 13 Oct 2014 12:43:33 +1300

Keith, Basically nothing much changes unless Labour got a bigger share of the vote- about a 3%ish increase nationwide, at which point New Zealand First would have the balance of power. I'm talking 3%ish increase in Labour without other parties raw numbers changing, rather than a swing.- so the people…

Keith Locke

Mon, 13 Oct 2014 10:44:19 +1300

Graeme, is it possible, now the special votes are in, for you to process the statistics for us and come up with seat distribution in the following scenarios:
1. If Hone had won his seat.
2. If the Maori Party had won its previous seats, Tamaki Makaurau and Te Hauauru.…

Graeme Edgeler

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 14:03:44 +1300

Graeme- legal question: does money paid to internal pollsters have to be declared under the Electoral Finance Act?

No. Declarations of expenditure under the Electoral Act relate to advertising expenditure. If a focus group was involved in making ads, that might count, but general polling? No.

Rob Stowell

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 21:50:50 +1200

Graeme- legal question: does money paid to internal pollsters have to be declared under the Electoral Finance Act? Or is that somehow not 'campaigning' but internal-business-as-usual for a party?

Sacha

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 18:13:15 +1200

You really don't have a clue what you're talking about

verily

Sacha

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 18:12:18 +1200

I can't remember if it was for that
or something else

classic

Ian Dalziel

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 17:53:34 +1200

Dimpersonation...
Back in the '70s, an acquaintance, disenchanted with the Muldoon Government, took it upon themselves to drive all over Canterbury on Election Day, voting at every polling booth they could find
– under their own name!
IIRC

They did do time, but I can't remember if it was for…

Rich of Observationz

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 17:41:52 +1200

This is simply a fantasy.

Absolutely. Even if your personation gang were very well informed as to people's non-voting plans, they still might be wrong maybe 10% of the time, so would show as double votes. Since there are very few double votes detected, there is very little personation.

(Personation…

stephen clover

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 17:21:22 +1200

What would you do with it?

Well if I was Cameron Slater I would use it to find out where Judith Tizard lived and post about it on Whaleoil, amirite?

Stephen Judd

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 17:19:12 +1200

To add to what Emma and tussock said, I was part of a team gathering advance vote data from the rolls on Friday night (with the consent of the Returning Officer, of course), as many teams from Labour and the Greens did. Certainly if there had been any shagging around…

Emma Hart

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 16:10:38 +1200

What would happen if a roll (there are more than 10 of them at busy Voting Places) goes missing for an hour or two?

This is insane. It would be incredibly obvious if a roll went missing. One is issued to each Issuing Officer. Without the roll, they can't issue…

icehawk

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:44:38 +1200

Indeed, you are right about the absurdity of such conspiracies flourishing.

One of the heartening things about the whole Dirty Politics saga is that once 4 people in NZ know something, it really has no chance of remaining secret long-term.

Sacha

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 15:11:36 +1200

How come I also saw a women in a van with the same group of people at more than one voting place?

SIS are less subtle these days

tussock

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 14:41:04 +1200

30% of enrolled voters don't vote!
Fuck you, by the way. I'm so cynical I thought National would only get 43% on carelessly biased polling that favours the advertiser's interests like last time. And then people went and did their jobs like professionals, the polls were right, I was wrong,…

tussock

Tue, 23 Sep 2014 14:22:22 +1200

and a very high chance the valid voter (on holiday at their parents' home up in Auckland) wasn't going to bother going out to cast a special vote.
Bullshit. It's ludicrous. University educated young people vote around 80% of the time. You're talking about people using thousands of cards to…

Caleb D'Anvers

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 20:45:14 +1200

let us as a country get moving, there is plenty to do
And no one even think about taking a tea break!

Kevin McCready

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 20:11:30 +1200

oh, and I forgot to add, that a book of numbered ballot papers goes missing too for a while. So instead of 9 issuing officers there may only be 8 issuing in the Voting Place. Dead easy for corrupt Voting Place Manager to arrange.

Kevin McCready

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 20:08:34 +1200

Nice that Tussock is so trusting.

30% of enrolled voters don't vote! You and I could think of many ways to vote for them.

How come I also saw a women in a van with the same group of people at more than one voting place?

Also check the Electoral…

Joe Wylie

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 18:57:05 +1200

Would it help if we all had unique ID chips implanted in our hands…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUa3np4CKC4

Ian Dalziel

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 18:44:24 +1200

Would it help if we all had unique ID chips implanted in our hands...

Brian Dixon

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 17:49:10 +1200

I'd like to be convinced that the system is reasonably fraud-proof but, having been a scrutineer several times now I think there are major flaws. In 2011, voter information was floating around the streets of North Dunedin in the weeks before that election having been stuffed into overflowing letter boxes…

Tim Michie

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:37:31 +1200

We don't have any No Confidence category.

A vote for a satirical party is a vote for a party. A spoiled vote is a spoiled vote. A non-vote is a non-vote.

Ian Dalziel

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:32:35 +1200

Our system is superb.
Thanks, that's good to know...

But is there a historic count on how often this scenario happens
so you get caught when they compare the books
and will the figure this year be publicised do you think?

I for one would be interested to know...

also…

tussock

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:26:06 +1200

Our scrutineer system is all superb, it's basically the best in the world, and things like that do get tried on and people just get nailed. There's a bunch of old folk and others being looked after at home with poor mobility get voting papers taken to them by family.…

Tim Michie

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:20:45 +1200

Gotcha. Cheers tussock.

tussock

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 14:14:47 +1200

The Māori electorates are all marked as 0 specials, because special votes are deposited in a box in the general electorate place and only sorted out to their proper electorates later. They overlap, so you can't count which is which yet.

Remember, specials is for where they're cast, not where…

Ian Dalziel

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:48:43 +1200

They open it, fiddle around with the papers and seal it up again with cellotape.
I reckon Chchch would have had a few voter ID cards go to dead addresses...
...someone who wanted to game such a system, might well consider it worth the risk.
An let's face it, National…

Tim Michie

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 13:28:25 +1200

Can anyone confirm I'm understanding correctly: this shows there are no Special Votes to be counted for Te Tai Tokerau (as opposed to no Special Votes yet counted)?

Kevin McCready

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 09:46:20 +1200

You forgot the Takeaway Special Votes (yes that's what they are called).

An Agent purporting to represent a voter (who cannot attend the Voting Place and is not recently dead) picks up a ballot paper and takes it away.

It works like this. The Issuing Officer stamps the ballot with…

icehawk

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 20:30:55 +1200

And if Hone had won his electorate seat? How would the Sainte-Lague (sp?) method have worked out then.

simon g

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 16:44:19 +1200

let us as a country get moving, there is plenty to do

Like, making the trains run on time?

"Snark", "dissent" ... tomato, tomato.

Matthew Poole

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 16:36:42 +1200

Question, Graeme: what happens about the Speaker? Carter continues on and gets replaced by someone else from National's list?

He's going to be even more unbearable and useless now that all the oversight mechanisms of Parliament are majority National.

tussock

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 13:05:21 +1200

There's not half a million informal votes sitting around is there? They all get a second and third look before the final count. Seems it was just another in the long trend of lower turnouts though.

eszett

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 07:07:02 +1200

Great analysis, Graeme.

Did you do any work on the electorate level? I'd be interested in the specials might change the result in Auckland Central and/or Hutt South. Both seem marginal enough.

Raymond A Francis

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 06:58:50 +1200

Nice work Graeme, the election night result will stand
The people have spoken, the Left are as not a popular choice as social media would have us believe( the snark on Twitter from the left over the Leaders speeches was amazing) let us as a country get moving, there is…

Public Address

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 06:58:50 +1200

Discussion from blog post.