How the votes get counted

7.00pm

A new system for counting the votes from today's election aims to get preliminary results out before midnight.

The system was developed by a senior business analyst at the Chief Electoral Office after lengthy delays at the last election.

In 1999, only 39 per cent of the 67 electorates completed their preliminary counting on election night, prompting Ministry of Justice and parliamentary select committee inquiries.

In 1996, full results were not known until 2am.

Under the new system, there will be one ballot box for each polling place and counters will work as a team to sort and count the votes.

The electorate vote will be counted first.

The votes will be divided up and handed out to the counters sitting around a table.

Each counter will be assigned a particular candidate or candidates, whose votes he or she will keep, while passing on votes for other candidates, until all the votes are accounted for.

The same will then be done with the party vote.

Previously, pairs of issuing officers counted all candidate votes and all the party votes from their ballot box.

When the counting is finished, each of the polling place managers will phone the results through to their returning officers, who will then enter the figures into the central election result computer system.

Regular votes cast before election day and votes cast in hospitals today were counted this afternoon and results should be available soon after 7pm.

The Electoral Office aims to have results for half the polling places available by 10pm, with the remainder out by 11.30pm.

There are 6216 polling stations at 2800 locations around New Zealand.

Approximately 18,000 people have been employed to conduct the 2002 election.

In the 1999 election, there were 2,127,000 votes cast.