By Ally Mullord
While a recount saw Carmel Sepuloni narrowly lose the electoral seat of Waitakere to National’s Paula Bennett, the Labour MP might be heartened to hear of the dedication of her voters.
The judge who oversaw the recount has released his comments, which lift the lid on the recount process and some of the more unusual voter behaviours – including his personal favourite, “the voter who emphasised their tick for Carmel Sepuloni by drawing a little orange heart in the rectangle containing her name”.
Judge J G Adams says several “informal votes” came back, many of which were from voters who had changed their mind halfway through voting, or made seemingly random marks on the ballot paper.
However, some were more creative – one voter “emphasised a tick vote for the National Party by adding JON KEY” and another ticked Carmel Sepuloni, but also drew a “wavering line” through her name.
The line left the judge “in such doubt that I did not recognise it as a clear choice (although, like the line, I wavered)”.
Scrutineers often had to hold the ballots up to the light to look at the pen strokes of voters and determine their intentions.
“[One voter] had coloured in the National Party logo… against the light it was clear that the voter had moved the pen about to colour it in,” the judge says.
“I could not be sure that it was more than a doodle, so I disallowed it.”
Proceedings became dramatic on Wednesday evening when a National Party scrutineer requested that police guard the voting papers overnight, suggesting that “if word leaked out that the vote seemed closer… there might be an attempt to interfere with the voting forms”.
Judge Adams declined this request as police “were likely to have more productive tasks on hand,” and the voting papers were discovered in the morning, untouched.
In his comments, Judge Adams mentioned the importance of enrolment – 393 votes cast in the electorate “remained unopened, never counted” as the people who placed them were not on the electoral roll.
He mentions one case of “a brother and sister with almost identical names” – the brother was enrolled, so his vote counted; the sister wasn’t and her vote was discarded.
There were several instances where an elderly voter had voted once in advance and then also gone to the polling place, which the judge says was possibly due to confusion.
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