Electionz.com and Datamail advised today that the release of some preliminary District Health Board and Council STV election results will be delayed following the discovery of some inconsistencies in the processing of some STV votes.

Electionz.com Chief Executive Steve Kilpatrick said we are working with Datamail, the company responsible for processing our STV voting papers, to determine the problems and we are together doing everything we can to rectify and resolve the situation.

Rechecking of the data that made up the preliminary results for the affected DHBs began as soon as the cause of the discrepancy was identified late yesterday.  While this discrepancy does exist, we can assure the public that the integrity of the elections has been safeguarded and all voting papers are securely captured and are held safely.

"During the quality control programme we found that some votes had not been accounted for in the original preliminary results," said Mr Kilpatrick.

"The results for Wellington District Health Board and some of the councils that chose STV may be affected," said Mr Kilpatrick. "These six councils are Dunedin, Marlborough, Wellington, Porirua, Kapiti and Matamata Piako."

"Until the problem is specifically identified we are unable to publish further preliminary results.  We will be working through all the details with Datamail over the next few days and will provide further updates as soon as we have further information."

Gary Woodham, Chief Executive of Datamail, said "we are working with Electionz.com around the clock to determine exactly what the problem is".

Inconsistencies were discovered as part of quality control checks relating to the transfer of 'captured' votes.  The measures we have in place are robust, this is how the discrepancies were originally identified. This has led to a comprehensive review of the end-to-end process used.

"In order to ensure the utmost transparency we have appointed an independent auditor, KPMG, to review the process," he said.

Mr Kilpatrick said "our priority is to verify that the data transfer is 100 % accurate and to ensure the absolute integrity of the process before any further results are released."

ENDS

Issued by:  Steve Kilpatrick, Managing Director, Electionz.com.
For further information: Charlotte Schaefer, ph 027 453 9882

By: Kiri