General manager Dale Ofsoske confirmed to the Herald this week it had now referred 16 such complaints. The matter is being handled by Detective Shaun Vickers of Counties-Manukau CIB and no other comment has been forthcoming. <\/p>\n
The Action Team\u2019s candidates have been joined on the board by three members from the \u014ctara subdivision. All have been sworn in and the board has elected Nair as chair and Singh as his deputy. <\/p>\n
Hausia is a member of the Labour Party<\/a> and the board has previously been dominated by Labour members. But in previous years self-declared \u201ccentre-right independents\u201d have also won selection. <\/p>\n Since the election, complaints about the result from across the political spectrum have been published on social media. <\/p>\n Much of the focus of these complaints is on the voting numbers. Hausia\u2019s petition alleges: \u201cStatistics and turnout anomalies [were] inconstant with historic and current voting patterns in Papatoetoe.\u201d <\/p>\n It also alleges there were \u201cirregularities in the handling and verification of special and duplicate votes, … an unprecedented surge in special voting [and] discrepancies and inaccuracies in the list of persons from whom voting documents were received\u201d. <\/p>\n There are three issues related to the voting numbers<\/a>. <\/p>\n The first is that the total votes for the local board rose in Papatoetoe while they fell everywhere else. <\/p>\n In nearby \u014ctara and \u014ct\u0101huhu the turnout dropped by 1 percentage point and 2.2 percentage points respectively, compared to the previous election. But in Papatoetoe it rose by 7.1 points. The citywide average was a drop of 6.7 points. <\/p>\n The second is where the extra votes went. The support for most candidates in 2025 was similar to the support they had in 2022. Hausia, for example, saw his 3117 votes in 2022 rise to 3254 this year. <\/p>\n Another candidate, the centre-right Peter Dons, saw his support go a little the other way, from 2112 to 1794. <\/p>\n But the four Action Team candidates all received at least 4500 votes. That\u2019s far more than everyone else. <\/p>\n Hausia\u2019s 3117 votes were enough to get him elected in 2022, but even though he increased his vote this time, he didn\u2019t even come close to winning a seat. <\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t need to be a data scientist to know when something fishy is going on,\u201d says Hausia. He calls the Papatoetoe vote \u201cthe clear outlier\u201d in the city. <\/p>\n \u014ctara-Papatoetoe is the local board where former MP and councillor Fa\u2019anana Efeso Collins started his political career. His widow Fia Collins has commented on the election on Facebook. <\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t help but find these results very suspicious,\u201d she says. \u201cNothing about these results is consistent with historical voting trends nor current trends across Auckland. It\u2019s also strange that newcomers have taken all four seats.\u201d <\/p>\n The Action Team doesn\u2019t accept this. They say they did well because they ran a good campaign. <\/p>\n Speaking for the group, Bhalla says, \u201cour campaign placed considerable emphasis on community outreach, door-to-door engagement and voter education, encouraging residents to enrol and take part in local elections. <\/p>\n \u201cWe believe this proactive approach, combined with Auckland Council\u2019s broader initiatives to make voting more accessible, played a major role in the increased participation.\u201d <\/p>\n The third numerical factor relates to special votes<\/a>. <\/p>\n Special votes are those cast away from the area, or at the end of the voting period or for some other special reason. <\/p>\n They include votes cast by anyone who doesn\u2019t receive their voting papers in the mail and applies for new papers. <\/p>\n One reason for this is to allow election organisers to check for fraud. Are you voting twice? Has someone else stolen your original voting papers, to vote for you? <\/p>\n Where they find two sets of voting papers under one name, they count the special vote and discard the ordinary one. <\/p>\n Papatoetoe voter Esther Tapuaki says she went through this process. Her original voting papers didn\u2019t arrive, so on September 24 she applied for a special voting pack, which she received on September 30. <\/p>\n She posted her special vote and on October 8 she contacted Election Services to check all was in order. They \u201cconfirmed I had allegedly voted with my original voting papers. But I clearly did not do this\u201d. <\/p>\n It appeared the original papers had been stolen and fraudulently used. The fraudulent vote cast in Tapuaki\u2019s name was discarded. <\/p>\n Because special votes add to the total votes cast, it\u2019s common for candidates\u2019 final tallies to rise. <\/p>\n But after the specials were counted in Papatoetoe, the final tallies for all the Action Team members went down. The numbers weren\u2019t large: the four candidates lost 33, 38, 47 and 49 votes. But the phenomenon is unusual. <\/p>\n Dons, a self-described \u201ccentre-right independent\u201d candidate in the election, says it appears that \u201cwhen many people complained that they had not received their voting papers in the mail, a small number went to the trouble of requesting replacement ones to be sent out. Maybe 40 to 50 voters\u201d. <\/p>\n As the election team cross-checked with other voting papers, Dons suspects they found the \u201c40-50 voters\u201d already had votes recorded in favour of the Action Team, likely on stolen forms.<\/p>\n He believes election officials then cancelled those votes and applied the replacement special voting paper, \u201chence the reduction in final votes for the \u2018fab four\u2019\u201d. <\/p>\n Hausia says, \u201cwith widespread reports of electors not receiving their voting papers yet appearing as \u2018voted\u2019 on the system, alongside claims of postal ballot irregularities, there are genuine concerns about the integrity and reliability of the voting process\u201d. <\/p>\n As reported earlier<\/a>, the initial complaint referred by Ofsoske to the police included allegations of \u201csevere electoral malpractice\u201d, including \u201cnightly vote stealing by a team of young boys\u201d, voters being instructed how to vote \u201cinside the polling booths\u201d, and other instances of voters \u201cin places like temples and churches\u201d being told how to vote. <\/p>\n The allegations refer to \u201cstandover tactics\u201d during meetings at the Sikh temple Gurudwara Sri Dashmesh Darbar in Papatoetoe, on September 28 and October 5. <\/p>\n Bhalla said last month<\/a> the Action Team \u201ccategorically deny any involvement in unlawful or unethical conduct\u201d. <\/p>\nThe Papatoetoe subdivision of the \u014ctara-Papatoetoe Local Board was the only area in Auckland where voting numbers rose in this year’s election. Graphic \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Members of the Papatoetoe-\u014ctara Action Team, Kunal Bhalla, Kushma Nair, Sandeep Saini and Paramjeet Singh. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n