Questions about the integrity of Dunedin’s election by one city councillor were rebuffed by the council’s chief executive.
Cr Lee Vandervis raised concerns about ‘‘misused’’ postal ballots at Thursday’s Dunedin City Council meeting.
Councillors were considering a draft submission to a nationwide public inquiry into October’s local body elections, backing the view of a well-regulated election process with a high level of electoral integrity.
Cr Vandervis questioned how this could be the case, given Dunedin’s voter turnout was 45.47%.
‘‘Especially because under postal voting, that means that more than half of the postal votes were flying around somewhere in Dunedin and not being used, we hope,’’ Cr Vandervis said.
Chief executive Sandy Graham said level of integrity did not relate to participation levels.
‘‘This is about ensuring that the votes that are cast are validly cast in accordance with the law. There is nothing to suggest that the votes in the election were anything other than that,’’ she said.
Cr Vandervis returned to the topic during debate, saying it was not appropriate to be satisfied with such levels of unused voting papers.
‘‘The 45% [of postal votes] that were used, a percentage of them potentially had been left lying around somewhere and were misused as well.’’
He also repeated his long-held criticism on the suitability of Dunedin’s single-transferable vote system.
A point of order was upheld against Cr Vandervis’ comments on the voting system as ‘‘irrelevant’’.
A second point of order was upheld for Cr Vandervis’ comment on the first ruling.
Ms Graham said the council had processes to decide electoral arrangements and to choose the voting method.
‘‘Both of which are council decisions - they are not necessarily done as part of the same process, but they are separate from this process.’’
Asked by Dunedin Mayor Sophie Barker if he would like to continue speaking, Cr Vandervis said ‘‘I would like to but I don’t see a lot of point given that nobody wants to hear’’.
Speaking to the wider submission, Ms Barker said the city’s voter turnout was ‘‘fair’’ and above Auckland (29%), Hamilton (33%) and the national turnout (39.4%).
‘‘But still, we would all like more voter turnout because I think that people should [feel] lucky to be in a democracy and exercise their democratic right.’’
Councillors approved the submission, Cr Vandervis recording his vote against.
