Brian Rudman: Attempt to manipulate electoral roll ham-fisted, sad and ridiculous

Cartoon / Bromhead

Just as you think the Super City elections can't get any duller, two of the mayoral candidates engage in a shadow cock fight on a stage on the North Shore, then it's revealed that 87 Indian-sounding voters are registered at two modest-sized Papatoetoe homes.

Now I can understand the two mayoral candidates jostling for what is a prize political plum. But laying yourself open to conviction to cast a single vote, presumably in an area you don't live in, seems pretty dumb.

Four of the nine candidates standing for the four seats in the Papatoetoe subdivision of the Otara-Papatoetoe Local Board have Indian names - two from the Labour Party and two from the Citizens and Ratepayers ticket. Fingers are now being pointed in both directions, and the police are investigating.

For all four candidates it's a potential calamity. Unless those behind this apparent manipulation of the democratic process are unmasked before voting papers go out, a shadow of suspicion hangs over all four.

With electoral rolls indexed both alphabetically and by "habitation", or address, this must go down as the most ham-fisted attempt ever to manipulate the rolls.

If this village-sized "family", all shacked up in two suburban houses, didn't trigger off computerised alarm systems at the Electoral Enrolment Centre, it would have sooner or later been noticed by an eagle-eyed organiser from a rival party. It seems, in this case, both the above occurred.

As one of those caught up in the issue said on television on Saturday, we don't want here in New Zealand the sort of corrupt practices that are widespread in what Indians proudly call the world's largest democracy.

But former Labour Party president Mike Williams reminded me that local-born Kiwis are quite capable of stretching the rules, too.

He was dispatched to Taupo after the cliff-hanger 1981 general election when, for the second time, Labour won more votes than National, but the Muldoon Government was hanging on with a paper-thin majority.

Labour had lost Taupo by a handful of votes, and his job was to try to get it back in a recount. What he found was a lot of well-heeled eastern suburbs Aucklanders registered to vote not from their home in Muldoon's safe electorate, but in their lakeside holiday homes in Taupo.

Labour failed to persuade the judge of the naughtiness of this transferred loyalty.

And let's not forget the once-notorious rest-home votes, where party organisers in marginal seats like Eden raced each other to be first over the doorsteps to help the befuddled and bewildered to fill out their voting forms. Not before time, political parties were banned from rest homes, and electoral office staff deputed to collect these votes.

Which is a reminder that where there are boundaries, there will be people willing to test them.

But at least in the Taupo situation, the stakes were high. It was about getting a government returned to office. In this case it's about getting two people on to the seven-member Otara-Papatoetoe Local Board. Without wanting to diminish the status and powers of this new body, it hardly seems worth risking one's freedom and reputation over.

Of course, in a twisted sort of way, you have to admire the 87 Indians' underlying belief in the system. If past local elections are any guide, more than 60 per cent of Aucklanders will sabotage the democratic system in another way - by not voting.

In the 2007 local polls, Aucklanders cared so little who ran their local councils that a large majority couldn't be bothered to vote. Only 35 per cent of Franklin, Papakura and North Shore voters turned out. Manukau and Waitakere managed 38 per cent and Auckland City 40 per cent. Rodney stood out with a 45 per cent turnout.

Now back to Friday's column, where I bemoaned the lack of arts and culture policies on the websites of mayoral contenders John Banks, Len Brown and Simon Prast.

I said I had expected better of Mr Prast, as founder of the Auckland Theatre Company. I was wrong. He has an excellent policy. Unfortunately it wasn't in the information appearing on the elections2010.co.nz website.

However, on simonprast.com, he presents the sort of arts and culture policy that underlines the emptiness of the front-runners' manifestoes.

Highlights include securing and supporting arts spaces like the St James Theatre, the Victoria Theatre in Devonport and the Mercury Theatre, and boosting regional support for key cultural institutions.