Julie Haggie: Transparency International NZ CEO on South Auckland local body election overturned

A belief whistleblowers are vital to exposing voting failures after a South Auckland local body election was overturned.

Judge Richard McIlraith ruled irregularities altered the outcome of the Papatoetoe vote for the Otara-Papatoetoe Local Board.

The case involved stolen voting papers and fraudulent use.

A new election must be held by April 9.

Transparency International NZ CEO Julie Haggie told Andrew Dickens there’s no sign of wider system problems nationally.

She says it does seem to be picking up them, as someone made a case for a district court inquiry and got a result.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There are concerns about the integrity of our elections. After
a South Auckland local body result was thrown out over
claims of voter fraud. Amnico judge found irregularities in the
Puppa Toy Toy subdivision that affected the result. That means
a new election has to be held next year. Investigators
say seventy nine votes were cast without the voter's knowledge,
some allegedly taken straight from the mailboxes. Julie Hagey is

(00:23):
the CEO of Transparency International New Zealand and joins you now,
good one to.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
You, Julie, good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
This is pretty concerning. Really, we haven't really heard much
of this sort of thing in the past.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
No, that's right. I think this is a very unusual case.
There have been complaints to judges, but none has actually
none has actually resulted in an overturning of an election
as far as I could look back, as far as
I could see, So it is really an unusual case.
And I have to say I haven't seen the decision
of the complaint and no change has been laid. But

(00:55):
though there are two investigations underway, so I can't talk
about publicly available on the media.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Okay, well, it's interesting. It's interesting when they've looked at
seventy nine votes the four the four councilors who got
onto the board all got on with majorities between twelve
hundred and two thousand. Would seventy nine irregular votes actually
affecting a result?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Yeah, I mean, I think what the judge said was
that there was an indication that there might be more,
and that this was just the ones they opened, and
they found that that a high portion of them had
been were actually voted for the group of the group,
and so they said there's likely to be it's likely
to be a bigger problem. And so I think that's
the biggest issue. The threshold they have to get to

(01:41):
under the Local Literal Act, the judge has to get
to to look at voiding a result, and he got
to that, and that's that's a high threshold. So it's
not clearly there's a range of issues. We don't know
them all yet, but clearly there's a range of problems.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Do you reckon there's more electorates and more elections that
are affected by this thing?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Oh well, no, I don't see evidence. We've got pretty
good systems and in this election there's been several challenges
to the District Court and quite a few of them
have been overturned because they hadn't met that three child.
So I think there is a process for people to
go through. It probably needs in the select committee that
looked into the last local abody election, the previous local

(02:23):
body election said thinks there are some changes that need
to be made the law to strengthen it and to
increase the penalties. But it does seem to be picking up.
That's the good thing about this is that a person
made there, made the effort to go to make a
district court inquiry, to petition for that and got a result.
So that's that's a good thing. That's a good thing

(02:43):
about our system.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Random message. Well, I was going to say, you could
say it was caught, and you know, it was caught
and the result was thrown out and that shows in
a way that our system is working. But it was
only caught because vivhaus here, who's the deputy chairman of
the board, actually had some concerns and brought the complaint.
So is the system really working or do we need
whistleblowers like Viv Well, I.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Think it doesn't. We do need people is your right
to say we don't think this voting process has been
run correctly. It's not just about somebody above that finding
it out. So everybody's got a right to do that
in relation to their voter, in relation to their who
voted for them or who didn't vote for them, They've
got a right to get there. There's there's problems with
the timing. They have to get it through very quickly,

(03:28):
so that's a that's an issue with timing. But it
is that system does seem to be does seem to
have held up in this in case, although we now
need to see the police investigations are underway. What really
matters is that if there has been malfeasance happening here,
people are actually held to account. And that's the real
nub of this. That's it might be harder to prove,

(03:49):
but I'm hopeful that the police are putting good energy
into that those investigations.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Thank you so much, Julie Hag.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
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