Election's a mystery to One News

Welcome to One News - if you'd like to know how Australia's elections work, we're completely incapable of telling you.

That seemed to be the problem for presenter Simon Dallow when he fronted a segment on our closest neighbour's electoral system.

As an instructional, the Friday night broadcast told viewers little that was accurate about the 1200 candidates vying for the 150 seats in the House of Representatives and 40 of the 76 seats in the Senate.

In fact, it used a completely different voting system to explain what 14 million voters - of 22 million citizens - would be doing with their votes.

The mistake was picked up by political animal and blogger David Farrar. He told Kiwiblog readers: "What a pity they got it so wrong. Simon Dallow, who fronted it, should send an angry-gram to whomever produced that item."

Farrar explained that Dallow had presented the "single transferable vote system" instead of preferential voting.

Dallow said Australians got two votes - they get one - and used an incorrect ballot paper to illustrate his points.

A TVNZ spokeswoman said the broadcaster was investigating how Dallow was given the wrong information to present. "We have egg on our face. We are sorry."

The polls closed in West Australia as this edition went to the printers.

At press time, Labor was the bookmakers' favourite to win with odds of $1.39. The opposing coalition was out at $2.90.