dug out those 53 votes<\/a> to check who they\u2019d initially been cast for before the irregularity was discovered. Fifty, or 94%, had gone to the Papatoetoe-\u014ctara Action Team. Lawyers acting for both Hausia and Ofsoske agree those votes were, in the words of McIlraith, \u201cwrongly cast\u201d, and almost all helped prop up the winning side.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s not great. But it\u2019s also only 79 votes, and there are two other, much bigger numbers at play. The most important is that margin of victory. To void the election result, McIlraith has to be satisfied that the irregularities \u201cmaterially\u201d impacted the result. On the face of it, 79 doesn\u2019t get you there, representing less than 10% of the votes Hausia needs to regain his board seat.<\/p>\n
In court, Mitchell asks McIlraith to consider what he believes is a strong possibility that the brushfire of irregularities is actually just part of a raging inferno of election fraud. He notes Auckland\u2019s turnout is generously 30%. What, then, are the chances that someone in Papatoetoe would even realise their voting papers had been stolen, let alone go to the trouble of trying to rectify the situation by casting a special vote? \u201cMost wouldn\u2019t have even noticed,\u201d Mitchell says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He thinks the 79 wrongful votes they\u2019ve discovered are just the \u201ctip of the iceberg\u201d; with most only found because the people who wanted to cast them were far more fervent about local democracy than the average Aucklander. There\u2019s another big number at play: more than 3,000 more votes were cast in Papatoetoe in the 2025 local election than in the 2022 one and there are no real explanations for the suburb\u2019s \u201csudden interest in democracy\u201d, he says. He argues the \u201chigh-tide mark\u201d for his case is that thousands of extra votes are the result of election fraud.<\/p>\n
Though he isn\u2019t accused of any wrongdoing, Ofsoske is the respondent to Hausia\u2019s petition as the chief electoral officer who ran the Papatoetoe election. In court, his lawyer David Collins sounds a note of caution. This case is so unusual that it\u2019s almost unprecedented, but he\u2019s dug up case law, some of which dates back 150 years. Generally it shows that in the rare cases where elections have been overturned here and in Australia, it\u2019s happened in situations where the result is close and the irregular votes would have made a clear difference to the outcome.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In his closing statement, Mitchell notes the potential perverse incentive at play if Collins\u2019 argument is accepted. Essentially, if widespread vote theft has taken place, the perpetrators may actually be saved by the sheer scale of their offending. By conjuring a massive majority, they\u2019ve made it harder to prove voting irregularities that have a material effect on the result of the election. The message to offenders from that outcome would be clear: go big or go home. \u201cIf the wider margin becomes the defence, it does have a chilling effect on democracy,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThat is the effect of the case law, isn\u2019t it?\u201d McIlraith replies. \u201cThe greater the margin, the harder it is to void the result.\u201d It\u2019s yet another thorny problem, and the judge is taking his glasses off to massage his temples again. He has a difficult task ahead. A judgment is due out by Christmas.<\/p>\n
At least one thing is clear from the proceedings though: this case starkly reveals the shortcomings of our postal voting system. McIlraith repeatedly refers to its potential \u201cfrailties\u201d and talks about widespread vote stealing as the \u201cworst-nightmare\u201d way the system could fail.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the judge adjourns the hearing, Hausia says whatever decision is handed down, he\u2019ll be happy if the case provides some impetus for putting an end to what he sees as an increasingly archaic voting method. \u201cChange the system,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople need to be confident that the vote that\u2019s recorded as having been cast in their name is actually their vote. It\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In court, they opened up 53 wrongfully cast ballots. Fifty of them had gone to the winning side.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[51,113669,492,42,14329,43,113670,135,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-177562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-auckland","9":"tag-auckland-local-elections-2025","10":"tag-comments-enabled","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-local-elections-2025","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-papatoeote","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}