Lester’s hopes for mayoralty take a blow
Hundreds of invalid votes Wellington’s ousted mayor was banking on to return him to office will in fact go to incumbent Andy Foster.
Clarification over the nature of the 385 invalid votes has revealed many of them would actually go to Foster if they were included in a possible recount, rather than to former mayor Justin
Lester as first thought.
Lester applied for a vote recount two weeks ago after being led to believe he would likely win if the invalid, or ‘‘partially informal’’, votes were con- sidered.
But it turns out that of the 193 votes he believed would have fallen his way in a recount – overturning his 62-vote deficit – 145 of them would in fact go to Foster.
In turn, 73 of the 109 votes thought to have favoured Foster will go to Lester.
Electionz.nz said the net result, once the permutations of the single transferable vote (STV) system played out, would be a 12-vote gain for Lester – well short of the number needed to overturn the election.
In any case, there were no grounds for the recount application – which is being considered by a District Court judge – to be approved, it said.
‘‘We follow the Local Electoral Act and the local electoral regulations which govern these elections. They do not allow partially informal votes to be included.’’
The confusion over the nature of the invalid votes came to light in a report filed to the judge by the chief electoral officer on Monday. Lester filed his application on the
‘‘We are still confident that there are reasonable grounds to believe a recount is required to be sure of the result.’’
Graeme Edgeler Justin Lester’s lawyer
basis the invalid votes should be considered because they clearly showed voters’ intentions.
However, his lawyer, Graeme Edgeler, said the new information would not deter him from pushing for a recount.
There were more than 60,000 votes in the initial count, including 5769 which were excluded from the final ‘‘iteration’’ because they did not include a ranking for Lester or Foster.
It was important a manual count took place to ensure all those votes were counted correctly by the computerised system, he said.
‘‘We are still confident that there are reasonable grounds to believe a recount is required to be sure of the result.’’
Lester said they had received conflicting information from the electoral officer on two counts: whether a manual recount was possible and who the invalid votes would go to.
‘‘The only way for Wellingtonians to get any certainty, either way, is for the votes to be scrutinised by a hand recount.’’
Foster said he had no concern a recount would change the result, but wanted to stop it because of the cost involved and the distraction it was causing. ‘‘I think it’s time for Mr Lester to move on. He’s damaging his own legacy.’’