Let me start out by saying that I have little doubt that Jules Radich won this election. He had been planning for it for a year or so and he spent plenty of money on it (well over the 55k allowed per candidate but as Team Dunedin had 7 candidates their spend limit was effectively 385k). How successful were they? Well they got Jules elected as Mayor and Andrew Whiley, Brent Weatherall and Kevin Gilbert1 elected to council, but arguably only Kevin would have not got there if not for being on Team Dunedin, so it was most effective in getting Jules the Mayoralty.
I don’t though have confidence in the vote counting. And this is why;
Insofar as the Mayoral count goes anyway.
This is an STV election so on the first iteration the last candidate drops out and their voters preferences then go to their 2nd choices.
The columns on the left are the candidate’s votes for when they were voted #1. The columns on the right are the number of votes allocated to #2 choices from Pamela Taylor being excluded. So what is wrong here?
The left hand oranges there are increases (well) above the norm for the other candidates. As you can see Hawkins and Mayhem-Bullock increased their votes between progress (Saturday night) and preliminary (update on Sunday night) and final (late Friday morning) by well over double the increases of the other candidates.
The top right hand orange (Barker’s row) is suspicious for not moving from 44 between progress and final. The next orange down (Milne’s row) is very suspicious for dropping 3 transfers between preliminary and final. It doesn’t move into error only because Taylor & Groshinski swapped last place here and therefore it is possible, but only just and further analysis might actually paint this one red.
The next one down is red as it is a drop in count from 16 to 15 from progress to preliminary without anybody changing position on who came last. This indicates a mistake in the supposed machine counting either at progress or at preliminary count stages. The last orange there, on the ‘Increase’ row indicates an increase in vote from progress to preliminary that is higher than the other candidates (but Pamela Taylor only had 332 votes so this is not a huge deal)
Now lets move on to 3 more iterations in the STV vote “count”;
The first orange is a suspicious increase from 21 to 60 in David Milne’s allocation of preferences from Jett Groshinski. Just below Milne there is a similar drop in allocations from Groshinski to Mayhem Bullock. Now as previously stated between preliminary and final Taylor did swap with Groshinski for last place. So this I guess is possible (and the red should therefore be orange) but it is extremely unlikely as both Taylor and Groshinski have now allocated their votes and there should not be such a difference. Mayhem-Bullock was 7th on the Mayoral candidate form and Milne was 8th on the Mayoral candidate form so the possibility is that the machine is reading the other’s barcode for the counts.
It is notable too that those barcodes don’t convert to 3 digits but rather to 4 digits in 10 cases and 3 digits and a letter in my case.
The next row down, orange, is mine for not moving from 10 allocations from progress to preliminary to final. I was the only candidate who did not get any more allocated votes from Groshinski as they were updated. Plausible but unlikely.
Finally the red on Pamela Taylor’s line is because between progress and preliminary when Jett Groshinski dropped out her allocations went down. Another clear “mistake” in either the progress or the preliminary count.
There’s a lot of issues isn’t there?
So next up I fall out of the race and the first oranges on Barker’s and Vandervis’ rows seem somewhat reversed to me. I would have thought that more of my voter’s #2 choices (or plausibly #3 by now) would have gone to Vandervis.
The red on Milne and Mayhem-Bullock’s rows is a very clear “mistake”. On progress and preliminary my allocations to Milne are 100 (a funny old number) but on the final count with only Taylor and Groshinski having swapped places the count drops on allocations to Milne by 33 and increases to Mayhem-Bullock (remember they’re 7th and 8th on the candidate forms) by 34 an almost exact swap.
Next Mayhem-Bullock drops out of the running. And the oranges are possible at this stage but it is notable how many go to Aaron Hawkins and Sophie Barker. It is also notable how much the increase is larger from progress to preliminary for Mayhem-Bullock’s allocations compared to other candidates. This may be indications of a very “organized” university vote. The 84.8% in the red which is progress/final ratio is also indicative of the same and maybe should be orange (with a very red tinge) than red.
Next we go to the next 3 candidates to fall out of the running;
And this time there’s not much to see other than that Carmen Houlahan’s allocations are to the top 3 candidates and at 89.3% her voters are seemingly disrespectful of everyone of the candidates except for Radich & Barker who are supposedly right and left (ha).
Lastly Vandervis falls out of the race and we have our wrap-up;
As you can see a significant percentage of Lee’s 2nd choices (41.5%) were for candidates who had already fallen out of the race or for noone. Who would have gained? It would have been myself, Pamela Taylor and maybe David Milne and Bill Acklin. It would have got me and Pamela higher up the list no doubt (and maybe David and Bill as well) but it wasn’t capable of changing the ultimate result.
The only other thing worth noting is the significant jump in votes for Hawkins from Preliminary to final. Evidence of cheating from the University end of town in my view, Hawkins really deserved no better than 4th or 5th in this race.
And no I don’t believe that I only received 612 votes. I was #1 on the candidate list (which itself should have helped) and Lee Vandervis was #2 on the candidate list (a random allocation it would seem) so my votes could have gone to him and Lee’s votes could have gone to me or to Carmen if the machine reading was out by one line. The problem with this count being conducted by machine seems to be that barcodes above & below may be read with your votes.
Of course the main problem for candidates is that there is one point of failure and that is Electionz in Christchurch. This also provides one point of manipulation for those so inclined. And it means that to put a scrutineer on the election count you have to pay for them to go to Christchurch which is a bus or air fare there and back and accommodation for a week. And with the count being in one place there are fewer people to question it. In a count by hand vote there would be some real questions if someone appeared to have 3000 votes but was only recorded as having 332 or 333 or 602. With me and Pamela Taylor (both clear in our opposition to the Pfizer lockdowns etc) the Government had a motivation to manipulate.
Did they do that at the count? Who knows.
But it is far from ideal.
Spreadsheet attached below. Council candidate analysis to follow.
#dcc #dunedin #elections #electionz #otepoti
I had an interesting conversation with Kevin on Saturday and another interesting one with Jules on Sunday.
An in-depth analysis that you have painstakingly put together which throws up a number of questions about possible irregularities. If you are inclined to take this further, is there anyone neutral you can go to for clarification? If there has been some interference, on any level at all
there will be a reaction. ‘As we sow so shall we reap’ aka as the law of karma.
This will be played out somehow and in some way, during the term of this council.
In my fair City ballots are found floating in ye olde Bay or precincts closed and consolidated and voting irregularities and of course expected outcomes for fixed oligarchies settled. Small Town to Megapolis voting simply is important so is fine if done correctly. Imagine Vladimir Putin putting up for vote Atomic War or total surrender. Or Biden allowing Democrats to lose. Managing expectations by vote parameters maybe works only when done correctly. Trump wasn't done correctly until Joe Biden and those Dems got control of the government once again.