Dunedin's Mayoralty election

Problems in its count

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;

Codes are that orange is suspicious, red is an indication of “error”.

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 g…