Scrutineering at the NZ Elections

I’ve been quite busy as late, working as a volunteer scrutineer at one of the Electorate offices set up to count and verify the election results.

I’ve been working with a nationwide team, (the Election Integrity Project) that was set up, partly as a result of the USA elections that were questionable in their integrity.

However, it seems a single person within the legal team running the election decided to hobble us as much as possible, and arranged as much obstruction as possible, even breaking their own rules to do so.

There have been many stories all over NZ, of scrutineers been denied access to data, official paperwork (vote count results) or just plain kicked out on ‘legal advice’ from Wellington.

You see, there is the law that covers elections, which we abided by..

The relevant legislation is here..

https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0087/latest/DLM307519.html

The Handbook for Scrutineering is here.

https://www.elections.nz/guidance-and-rules/candidate-hub/candidate-rules/scrutineers-handbook/

And then there is a mysterious manual that the Election Officials use, which only they have, and wont show us….

So, anyway, written below is my personal experience for Election day 14 October

Upon arrival, I showed the relevant paperwork to the Electoral manager
-Form for Appointment by Scrutineers
-Declaration by Scrutineer form (I had had this presigned in front of a Justice of the peace)

He advised only the originals were valid, and not photocopies.
He wouldn’t accept the presigned “Declaration by Scrutineer form” and demanded I sign another one!
He took both of these away with him and never returned them.

The ballots are manually counted, and this was done in a conscientious and professional manner.
Some administrative /counting errors were detected and sometimes resolved. I saw no sign of dishonesty or fraud regarding regarding this.

After 6PM, The advance counting was finished, and they prepared for the ‘Preliminary count’.
This is where the ballots are manually counted at the polling booths and the results are phoned into the Electorate HQ, then sent to Wellington and publicly announced.

We attempted to get the numbers been returned, but they made it very hard for us to do so.
We were then invited to move upstairs to another room, where the manager would bring the completed count form to us to copy after they had reported the numbers themselves. (they were really nice at this point -actually suspiciously nice)

After a suspiciously long time, He returned with his mysterious manual and an email in his hand, and advised us that he had legal advice from Wellington that we couldn’t scrutineer these numbers.

We checked our own manuals and it doesn’t say this, we mentioned this to to him, and he advised he just didn’t have time for this.

He wouldn’t show us the email or the relevant part of his mysterious manual he was referring to.

He left and locked the door behind him, which meant we only had the option of leaving via another door which lead to the normal exit.

I could go on and mention other experiences during the week, but you probably get the vibe by now.

P.S. ‘legal advice’ means nothing and is effectively ‘opinion’ and has no legal standing.

P.P.S this ain’t over