{"id":83299,"date":"2025-10-17T00:48:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T00:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/83299\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T00:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T00:48:10","slug":"kaipara-district-council-backs-craig-jepson-election-complaint-in-secret-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/83299\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaipara District Council backs Craig Jepson election complaint in secret vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

Outgoing councillor Eryn Wilson-Collins said the decision was made in spite of the senior electoral officer Dale Ofsoske and council lawyer Warren Bagma advising the intent of the election process challenge could not be achieved<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Councillors this morning unsuccessfully fought for the decision about the complaint to be made in public.<\/p>\n

Those who voted in favour of the council deciding behind closed doors were Jepson, deputy mayor Jonathan Larsen, councillors Gordon Lambeth and Rachael Williams.<\/p>\n

Those against were mayoral candidate Ash Nayyar and Wilson-Collins.<\/p>\n

\u014ctamatea councillor Mark Vincent had already walked out of the meeting in disgust over what was happening.<\/p>\n

He called the meeting a farce. <\/p>\n

Nayyar walked out of the meeting after the public were excluded, saying what was happening couldn\u2019t be justified.<\/p>\n

\"MembersMembers of the public, including 76-year-old Peter Linnell, before they were excluded from this morning’s Kaipara District Council meeting. Photo \/ Susan Botting<\/p>\n

The council has said little about the details of the challenge but there was an intent to try and halt the release of final election returns for Kaipara District Council<\/a> expected about 4pm today.<\/p>\n

Mayoral candidate Larsen, who was endorsed by Jepson, said the challenge centred around election processes and referred specifically to challenging the election management processes of Kaipara District Council rather than wanting to challenge the election process for the whole of the country.<\/p>\n

\"KaiparaKaipara mayoral candidate Jonathan Larsen at today’s emergency meeting. Photo \/ Susan Botting<\/p>\n

The challenge is around Kaipara District Council and Northland Regional Council <\/a>election processes.<\/p>\n

Larsen said Northland Regional Council was involved because Kaipara\u2019s electors had their say on the future of its Te Raki M\u0101ori constituency during the election process. <\/p>\n

He said today\u2019s election results would not change the fact that Kaipara District Council had made this challenge.<\/p>\n

Current front runner Larsen is five votes ahead of closest rival Snow Tane, and 31 votes ahead of third placed contender Dr Jason Smith, who has been Kaipara mayor before.<\/p>\n

He would not say whether he was going to challenge the results outcome when released this afternoon.<\/p>\n

Mangawhai resident Helen Price, speaking from outside the meeting, said she was embarrassed about what was happening at the council.<\/p>\n

She said democracy was unjustifiably being called into question.<\/p>\n

There were processes that could be followed to question elections and their management, Price said, and the way that it was being done by the council may was not okay.<\/p>\n

Fellow resident Sue Poynter believed the election process had been legitimate.<\/p>\n

In her opinion, the events of the past 24 hours were because candidates supported by Jepson, such as Jonathan Larsen who had the mayor\u2019s endorsement, may not be elected.<\/p>\n

\"MangawhaiMangawhai and Kaiwaka\u00a0residents dubbing themselves the democracy defenders outside today\u2019s Kaipara District Council meeting. Photo \/ Susan Botting<\/p>\n

In response to criticism from community members, Larsen said people were entitled to their opinion.<\/p>\n

The meeting this morning in Mangawhai was a continuation of last night\u2019s<\/a> that was adjourned by Jepson 25 minutes in after he said it became \u201cunruly\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I\u2019m not going to put up with this process interference,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople stood up and started shouting and wouldn\u2019t sit down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jepson last night said he had called the emergency meeting early because he didn\u2019t want people to think he was acting from sour grapes. He was unconcerned about the final result.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got serious concerns about how the election was run,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the vote harvesting, if you look at the way people have operated the voting booths in the district.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe classic one is how the M\u0101ori Party co-opted a Whang\u0101rei District Council voting booth at Whang\u0101rei Unitec [NorthTec] and they put all their signs up saying vote for the M\u0101ori ward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"OutgoingOutgoing Kaipara mayor Craig Jepson. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n

Jepson said it was \u201cinappropriate\u201d to tell people how to vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m open to a process that examines in detail what\u2019s occurred, not just in our electorate but others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe TMP people had very aggressive signage telling people they had to vote to retain the M\u0101ori ward. That is not how an election should be operated. It\u2019s supposed to be impartial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jepson suggested a thorough investigation into not just Kaipara\u2019s voting system but New Zealand in general.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s not suffering from anomalies in people who have vested interests in controlling the process,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we need to have a national election day for local government where everybody turns up, presents their ID and votes.<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of this other stuff going on where votes are being harvested and people are being told how to vote. There is all sorts of nonsense going on in the background that needs to be stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jepson also questioned the need for postal votes.<\/p>\n

The outgoing Kaipara mayor suggested the integrity of the voting process has deteriorated since the last election.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been infiltrated by activists who have made the most of the opportunity to harvest votes and abuse the process,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have entities who are busy enrolling people, and not just enrolling them, but telling them how to vote, to me that is harvesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Electoral officer Dale Ofsoske, who runs the company contracted to run Kaipara\u2019s elections, yesterday seemed to pour cold water on the rationale for the emergency meeting.<\/p>\n

Speaking via audiovisual link at last night\u2019s meeting, he said the vote-counting process would continue and the final result would be released late on Friday, as planned.<\/p>\n

Jepson was unable to be reached for comment after today\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

\u25a0 LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Outgoing councillor Eryn Wilson-Collins said the decision was made in spite of the senior electoral officer Dale Ofsoske…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[34609,32319,2562,12797,5205,6650,7557,5903,71,78,63786,62433,23157,40571,10934,111,43,139,69,32956,5204,51721,9095,1865,5905],"class_list":["post-83299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-backed","tag-backs","tag-claims","tag-complaint","tag-council","tag-craig","tag-district","tag-election","tag-from","tag-in","tag-irregularities","tag-jepson","tag-kaipara","tag-letter","tag-mayor","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-outgoing","tag-process","tag-regarding","tag-secret","tag-today","tag-vote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83299","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=83299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}