Auditor-General to provide assurance for WCC vote counting

The Auditor-General has agreed to provide assurance to Wellington City Council (WCC) in relation to the counting of votes in last Saturday's elections.

The purpose of the work is to ensure that the Council, Electionz.com and Datamail have adequate controls in place to ensure a complete and accurate processing of validly cast votes. The work will involve ensuring that the reasons for the inability to count all valid votes to date have been identified, that processes exist to ensure that the STV calculator will effectively count all votes and that those processes have been followed in deriving the Council's results.

It is Electionz.com, Datamail and their advisors that are working on isolating the issues, developing solutions and implementing them.

Our advice is that the issues affecting all outstanding elections are likely to be common across all Councils and District Health Boards. Consequently the Auditor-General is working initially with Wellington City Council on these issues.

We have been given no indication as to the time it will take for the matter to be resolved. The provision of our assurance will be dependent on the progress made by the other parties mentioned.

For any enquiries, please contact:
Bruce Robertson, Assistant Auditor-General Local Government
Telephone: (04) 917 1500
E-mail: [email protected]