Updated 11.45am, Thu 13 Oct
Due to the significant volume of special votes received, Auckland’s local election’s final count and official results will be announced on Saturday 15 October.
“We’ve received about 6500 special votes in total, and so it is taking longer than expected. It’s important we process these accurately – the verification of these votes needs to be exact before being forwarded onto the Electoral Commission for confirmation,” says Dale Ofsoske, Independent Election Services.
Special votes take a lot more time to process as there are extra steps involved to ensure the votes cast are eligible before they are sorted and counted.
Provisionally elected candidates with marginal leads have been notified.
The final count and official results will be published on Saturday 15 October at voteauckland.co.nz/results2022
Updated 2pm, Wed 12 Oct
Update: Auckland local election – status of special votes
Just under 6500 special votes were received over the course of the voting period and these are now being processed. That’s a thousand more special votes than were returned in 2019. These votes have not been included in the progress or preliminary results. They will be added to the final count once they have been verified.
Part of the process requires most special votes to be sent to the Electoral Commission for details to be validated on the electoral roll before their votes are added to the final count. The purpose of the validation process is to ensure all those that returned a special vote are eligible to have their vote counted. Voters that were already on the roll but lost or misplaced their original vote do not need to be verified by the Electoral Commission.
The final count, which will include special votes, is expected to be announced on Saturday 15 October.
Originally published 11.45am, Mon 10 Oct
The race is almost over.
More than 64,000 votes were returned on Saturday morning. Auckland’s local election participation rate is now at 35 per cent, up from Friday’s 31 per cent – the count does not yet include special votes.
Preliminary results, which now account for about 97 per cent of votes, confirm Wayne Brown remains to be the provisionally elected mayor of Tāmaki Makaurau. Brown is in front with 180,173 votes, now ahead of Efeso Collins by 57,753 votes.
Auckland Council Chief Executive Jim Stabback welcomed Mr Brown to Te Wharau o Tāmaki - Auckland House this morning.
“We’ll be spending the next few days getting to know the new Mayor and beginning a round of briefings.
“On behalf of the Auckland Council whānau, we welcome the Mayor and all of the incoming councillors and local board members to the new term and look forward to working with them, for Tāmaki Makaurau, for the next three years,” he says.
Preliminary results update
“The number of last-minute votes that came in on Saturday morning was significant and we’re now seeing a few changes to candidates who were leading in the progress results announced shortly after the close of voting,” says Rose Leonard, Auckland Council’s Manager Governance Services.
With the large volume of last-minute votes added to the count, there are now variations to the results for candidates who were marginally leading in the progress results.
Today’s preliminary results show:
In Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa, Julie Fairey is now leading for the councillor position with 16,602 votes – overtaking Will McKenzie by 551 votes. And Whau Councillor candidate Kerrin Leoni is now in front of Tracy Mulholland by 278 votes.
The full list of preliminary results is published here: voteauckland.co.nz/results2022
Electoral Officer from Independent Election Services, Dale Ofsoske says, “Given the large volume of special votes that came in, we’ve added extra resource to process and count these. The addition of validated special votes could again change the final count to be announced on Saturday.”
The declaration of the official results, which will confirm all newly elected members of the council, will be announced on Saturday 15 October. This was previously expected to be Friday 14 October.
For all things elections, visit voteauckland.co.nz
