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Judge orders rare by-election in Auckland local body election | RNZ News (www.rnz.co.nz)

submitted 1 week ago by rimu@piefed.social to c/politics@lemmy.nz

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While other Auckland areas saw turnout drop, voting numbers in Papatoetoe increased by more than 7 percent. All four seats went to first-time candidates from the Papatoetoe Ōtara Action Team. The result was inconsistent with historic voting patterns. None of the previous local board members of the Papatoetoe subdivision were re-elected.

Sketchy! Who are these guys?? https://www.facebook.com/papatoetoeotaraactionteam/

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Wow, that's quite some nerve to steal voting papers and vote on behalf of people! Hopefully this is publicised enough that no one votes for those candidates, I'm not sure you could meet the burden of proof required to actually prosecute them.

Interesting that this was picked up by a petition and not from people double-voting. Surely some of these people would want to vote but didn't get voting papers, and so would ask for new ones, then be identified as having voted twice?

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Hopefully these guys get a significant punishment.

Subverting democracy is a serious offense.

This is not a crime of need, nor a crime of passion. This was a premeditated attempt to undermine the democratic foundation we rely on. I'm not sure what their goals were, but I'm sure they were not for the betterment of everybody.

[–] phtheven@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

It's also a massive indictment of our voting system. These guys won by a landslide of hundreds of votes, and only 51 were identified as definitely fraudulent, not enough to overturn the vote. The judge had to make a judgement call that those fraudulent votes were enough reason to call for another election, which is not an ideal situation.

These guys got caught because they got greedy and overplayed their hand. Makes you wonder how many people have gotten away with this sort of thing.