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Speaker 1: Well, surely to goodness the judge throwing out that election

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Speaker 1: result in Auckland has started the clock ticking on postal

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Speaker 1: voting and council elections. I mean, this case may not

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Speaker 1: seem like a big deal, given that it involves just

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Speaker 1: seventy nine votes in just one subdivision in just one

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Speaker 1: relatively small local board election in Auckland. But the seventy

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Speaker 1: nine may be just the tip of the iceberg. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it may actually be that hundreds of ballot papers and

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Speaker 1: that subdivision was stolen from letterboxes, filled in and then

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Speaker 1: passed off as legit votes. Now Ken Turner from the

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Speaker 1: White Tarkety's other side of the city is also considering

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Speaker 1: legal options because he reckons something funny happened with about

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Speaker 1: two hundred and twelve votes in his election as well.

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Speaker 1: None of this surprises me because years ago, when friends

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Speaker 1: of mine was still flatting, as happens, mail turned up

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Speaker 1: for previous tenants. Some of that quite a lot of

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Speaker 1: that male, like we're talking close to about ten to

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Speaker 1: twelve pieces of that male were voting papers from previous tenants.

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Speaker 1: So my friends did what flatties do. They filled the

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Speaker 1: papers and sent them all back in as legitimate votes.

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Speaker 1: No one ever got in trouble for it. I know

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Speaker 1: that the mail voting system is ripe for being gamed,

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Speaker 1: but perhaps in our naivety, we hadn't imagined it would

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Speaker 1: go from a bunch of silly flatties to what seems

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Speaker 1: like it may have been an orchestrated rigging of an election.

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Speaker 1: At worst. Postal voting should absolutely one hundred percent go

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Speaker 1: the way of the horse and the cart. It is

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Speaker 1: not the only reason so many of us can't be

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Speaker 1: bothered with council elections, but it is a significant part

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Speaker 1: of it. Be honest about it. You get the mail,

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Speaker 1: you pop it on the counter, you forget about it,

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Speaker 1: you find it after election day as well passed, or

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Speaker 1: you see it then and then you find it too

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Speaker 1: hard to remember where to find a postbox. Not only

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Speaker 1: does it make it harder to vote, but it also

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Speaker 1: makes it we now find out harder to trust the

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Speaker 1: election outcome. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen

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Speaker 1: live to news talks that'd be from six am weekdays,

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Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.