The Electoral Commission has apologised after data entry errors at three polling booths led to hundreds of votes being wrongly assigned to fringe parties.
At two voting places in Port Waikato and one in Ilam, some party votes were recorded in the wrong row, giving hundreds of votes to the Leighton Baker Party and the New Conservatives, while National received none.
It appears that the commission was only alerted to the error via a Herald investigation.
In a media statement from the Electoral Commission, chief electoral officer Karl Le Quesne said that the number of votes involved was low and “does not affect the overall results, successful candidates or allocation of seats at all”.
“We apologise that these data entry errors were not picked up in the checks made before the official results were published,” said Le Quesne. “They should have been corrected and we regret that didn’t happen.
“A full check of all voting place results is being undertaken immediately to establish if there are any other transcription errors.”
In the same statement, acting Electoral Commission board chair Jane Meares said she had “full confidence in the integrity of the election process and the results”, but that an “independent review of the quality assurances processes in place” would be commissioned.
The biggest misallocation of votes was at the Pukekohe Intermediate voting place in the Port Waikato electorate, where the Leighton Baker Party was assigned 505 votes meant for National, when in fact it received none. Other parties affected include Labour, the Greens, NZ First and Te Pāti Māori. Once the totals have been amended, the Leighton Baker Party is likely to drop from 0.09% to 0.08%, moving it from third to last place to second to last place among the 17 parties on the ballot.