Voting forms for Miramar in stashed mail
A Wellington postie has been stood down after 3000 items of mail, including 667 voting forms, were found dumped - or possibly hoarded.
Electoral officer Warwick Lampp said the stack of voting packs was found unopened and undelivered, affecting 13 streets in Maupuia, a hilltop suburb on Miramar Peninsula which has about 1500 residents.
‘‘It looks like the mail’s been hoarded, but we won’t know until New Zealand Post’s investigation is over,’’ he said.
NZ Post spokesman Richard Trow said its inquiry began at the weekend, and the incident was isolated to that suburb. The male postie has been stood down pending disciplinary action.
‘‘We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this has caused,’’ Trow said.
Interfering with mail can come with a heavy penalty. In 2013, Queenstown postie Philippa Lindsay was sentenced to 17 months’ jail and ordered to pay $30,000 reparation to NZ Post after stealing more than 20,000 items of mail in Wakatipu.
Because the Maupuia investigation was still in progress, Trow would not say where exactly the mail and ballot papers had been found, or what state the postal items were in. ‘‘There has to be a process, you can’t prejudge.’’
Lampp found out yesterday about the undelivered voting papers and said he was disappointed it took NZ Post so long to tell him.
‘‘It’s simply not good enough, but at least they have taken the appropriate steps to remedy it.’’
Affected streets include all or parts of Akaroa Drive, Arahanga Grove, Aramoana Place, Aranui St, Booth St, Brussels St, Countess Close, Duchess Place, Maupuia Rd, Taihinu Rd, Ropa Lane, Waiwera Cres and Zaida Way.
Lampp said all the voting packs would be delivered to Maupuia residents this morning by courier, along with a letter of apology from NZ Post. Voting for the local body elections closes at midday on Saturday, October 8.
The found items of standard mail would also be redelivered, with an apology, after they had been sorted.
A similar problem affected residents of Tauranga’s Welcome Bay suburb during the 2013 local body
‘‘It’s simply not good enough, but at least they have taken the appropriate steps to remedy it.’’ Electoral officer Warwick Lampp
elections when 400 pieces of mail, including 290 voter packs, were stolen.
The culprits were never found, nor were the voter packs. The ballot for those affected was cast by special vote.
Postal Workers Union of Aotearoa president John Maynard said the postie was a union member and the case was distressing for his colleagues.
‘‘When this sort of thing happens, the rest of the posties in the branch get very upset because there’s a very strong public service culture among posties,’’ Maynard said.
Dumping voting papers had the potential to influence the election, and non-delivery of mail was taken very seriously.
NZ Post took vetting of staff seriously, but Maynard said the Maupuia postie had not been with the company long.
In the leadup to the Queenstown mail theft case, Maynard said NZ Post had ‘‘fobbed off’’ complainants regarding their missing mail.
This time he commended NZ Post for investigating immediately.
If allegations against the postie were proved, Maynard said the case would probably be an employment matter of breach of trust and confidence. It would be up to NZ Post to decide how to proceed, or whether to press charges against the employee.
In local body elections, where voter turnout is traditionally lower than a general election, a few hundred votes - or non-votes can greatly influence results, even in a populous city like Wellington.
In 2010, incumbent Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast led main challenger Celia Wade-Brown by a slim 40-vote margin after preliminary counting on election day.
But Prendergast ended up being toppled by 176 votes once special votes were finally tallied.
Special votes are cast when people do not receive their election papers, the papers are spoiled, or when people had enrolled to vote after the deadline.
In 2013, veteran northern ward councillor Helene Ritchie had a nervous wait to see if she would be re-elected for a 10th term.
She was just 31 votes ahead of her nearest rival for the one remaining council seat on election night, with 650 special votes still to be counted. She ended up scraping in by 27 votes.
Wellington City Council was one of eight councils keen to offer online voting alongside postal voting for this year’s election, in a bid to increase voter turnout.
But Associate Minister of Local Government Louise Upston canned the idea in April, saying more security testing was needed to ‘‘guarantee public confidence in the election results’’.