17 03 10 2023.pdf

6(c)

•  Several Electorate Managers (EMs) reported issues using the reconciliation app last night.

Voting Place – Lower North Island
•  Minor incident at a Wairarapa VP on Monday around lunchtime - An individual stood at the exit of
the Voting Place (VP), filming with his camera, shouting at voters inside to support Te Pati Māori
The Voting Place Manager (VPM) intervened and asked him to stop and move away.  Eventually he
was persuaded to leave the area.
•  A large media contingency (understood to be TV One news) arrived at Victoria University with the
Greens Party and the Wellington Mayor. They had not sought permission to film.  The media team
did not follow protocols when asked.  They were asked not to film/photograph behind the voting
screen and the ballot box areas but took footage.
•   24000 votes estimated across region for yesterday.
Voting Place – South Island
•  Mobile Support were driving during the wild weather and reported seeing overturned trucks/vans.
•  Accessing eRoll on phones was problematic, connectivity was poor due to the weather.
•  Reconciliation app issues. Some Voting Place Managers found the processes hard to complete.
ISSUES
•  Ongoing management of EasyVote issues
•  The impact of delays in getting the EasyVote cards out to voters, means vote issuing is slower.
Enrolment
GENERAL UPDATE
•  7,000+ online forms received overnight
•  The Electorate manager (EM) for Wellington central has advised that a “stack” of enrolment
application forms had been dropped off at one of their advanced voting places.  The EM has reason
to believe that these forms are from people who participated in the demonstrations at Parliament
last week
•    Enrolment will process these forms in the same way we would deal with any other enrolment form
(reach out to the elector to try and facilitate corrections/correct completion of the form)
•  There have been 2,500 enrolment forms received at advanced voting places.
IT
GENERAL UPDATE
•  MOJ Criminal records check processing has been impacted by technical issues within the Universal
Service Bus. Resulting in a backlog of records to be processed, which introduces risk to the
recruitment process. An Incident Management Team (IMT) meeting has been held to ensure cross
business awareness and coordinated response.  IT is now working with partners and Ministry of
Justice (MOJ) to ensure files are processed correctly, root cause is identified and addressed
•  Enrolment Centralised Processing Wi-Fi issues in Upper Hutt – Further work is planned for this
afternoon to extend wired connections to all agents, with the intent of further enhancing call quality.
Call centre grade headsets will also be deployed this afternoon, enhancing user and public call
experience
•  IT Service Desk Monitoring – There were 250 calls into the desk yesterday, an increase of 65% on
last Monday, but within expectations and no major issues to report.  Tuesday has already been
busier than yesterday, but all manageable.
Customer
GENERAL UPDATE:
Services
•  There has been an increased volume of enquiries received since the Advanced Voting Period started.
Since yesterday, the team had 1,238 tickets resolved, received 91 phone calls and made 18 outbound
calls. 91% of tickets were resolved in one-touch. Telnet received 4,423 calls, and 325 emails
•  The top enquiry was about EasyVote (22%), followed by Where to Vote (19%) and Update details
(15%). 29% of calls were triggered by website information
•  There are 33 complaints on hand across the business units.
Communications
GENERAL UPDATE:
and Education
Preparing to publish advance voting number on vote.nz at about 2pm once numbers have been checked.

Numbers will also be published on social media.
Media
•  DCE, Operations interview on The Breeze this morning
•  Facilitating a lot of requests from media for filming at voting places
•  Themes – first day of voting, overseas voting, EasyVote packs, no ‘I voted’ stickers this year, Te Pati
Māori complaint regarding Act’s plane use, political signage near voting places in malls
•  Communication to go out regarding” you don’t need an EasyVote pack to vote”.
Social Media
Themes - stickers, Greens advertising in a mall, EasyVote delivery.
Daily metrics
Heavy volume of enquiries across all our channels for the first day of voting:
•  26 media enquiries
•  670 enquiries and comments on social media in the last 24 hours (an increase of 180% compared to
the past 24 hours)
•  251, 546 visitors to vote.nz (an increase of 350% on the previous day).

Action
•  Prepare a message for the website on when to expect your EasyVote packs and you don’t need
an EasyVote pack to vote
•  Prepare some reactive FAQs on EasyVote packs for Enquiries, Telnet and Voting Services
Engagement staff.

Legal & Policy
GENERAL UPDATE/ISSUES
•  NZ Loyal served the Commission with a letter of demand on 2 October and a draft statement of
claim. Their lawyers have indicated they are instructed to commence proceedings in the High Court
by 11am on 3 October if the Commission does not accept their candidates on the party’s list.  Crown
Law has been instructed by the Legal team on this matter. They have alleged issues with access to
the Party Portal and Election Management System (EMS). We are working with the IT team on a
chronology timeline
•  We are following up on alleged buffer zone advertising breaches brought to our attention yesterday.

Action
•  Reminder to Electoral Managers of what the buffer zone is.
Strategic
GENERAL UPDATE:
Engagement and
•  Multiple enquiries regarding EasyVote packs not arriving in time – providing reassurance that people
Partnership
can still participate even if they have not received them.
•  Engagement staff across the country are moving into Voting Services work and so likely to have less
opportunity for insight gathering.
Security &
GENERAL UPDATE:
Integrity
Four Security Incidents reported from the field yesterday:
Type
Reported
Resolved
Filming and disruption
2
2
Suspicious behaviour
1
1
Guard quality
1
1
•  Two incidents of filming at Voting Places (VPs). Both handled by Voting Place Manager.

6(c)
Assessed that this was likely general suspicious behaviour, not targeted at the Election.
•  Guard with insufficient training sent home and alarms set. New guard organised.

North Island: Partly cloudy in the west, with isolated showers. Fine elsewhere. South Island: Cloudy in the
west, with scattered showers. Mainly fine elsewhere.
Friday
North Island: Fine in the east, but cloud increasing elsewhere with isolated showers. South Island: Rain
developing in the west with possibly heavy falls. Scattered falls elsewhere.
Chatham Islands
Showers, with westerlies changing gale southerly Tuesday, clearing on Wednesday with winds easing.
Cloudy periods on Thursday and Friday with light winds.

Enrolment

Customer Enquiries

Overseas, Dictation

General Election 2023 Voting

6(c)

Voting Place – Lower North Island
•  Minor incident at a Wairarapa Voting Place on Monday. An individual stood at the exit of the Voting
Place (VP), filming with his camera, shouting at voters inside to support Te Pati Māori. The Voting
Place Manager (VPM) intervened and asked him to stop and move away.  Eventually he was
persuaded to leave the area.
•  A large media contingency (understood to be TV One news) arrived at Victoria University with the
Greens Party and the Wellington Mayor. They had not sought permission to film.  The media team
did not follow protocols when asked.  They were asked not to film/photograph behind the voting
screen and the ballot box areas but took footage.
•   24000 votes estimated across region for yesterday.
Voting Place – South Island
•  Mobile Support were driving during the wild weather and provided reports of overturned
trucks/vans.
•  Accessing eRoll app on phones was problematic, connectivity was poor due to the weather.
•  Reconciliation app issues. Some Voting Place Managers found the processes hard to complete.
ISSUES
•  Ongoing management of lack of EasyVote packs
•  Impact of delays in getting the EasyVote cards out to voters, result in slower vote issuing.
Enrolment
GENERAL UPDATE
•  7,000+ online forms received overnight.
•  The Electorate manager (EM) for Wellington central has advised that a “stack” of enrolment
application forms had been dropped off at one of their advanced voting places. The EM has reason
to believe that these forms are from people who participated in the demonstrations at Parliament
last week.
•    Enrolment will process these forms in the same way we would deal with any other enrolment form
(reach out to the elector to try and facilitate corrections/correct completion of the form).
•  There have been 2,500 paper enrolment forms taken at advanced voting places as of last night.
IT
GENERAL UPDATE
•  MOJ Criminal records check processing has been impacted by technical issues within the Universal
Service Bus. Resulting in a backlog of records to be processed, which introduces risk to the
recruitment process. An Incident Management Team (IMT) has been held to ensure cross business
awareness and coordinated response.  IT is now working with partners and Ministry of Justice (MOJ)
to ensure files are processed correctly, root cause is identified and addressed.
•  Enrolment Centralised Processing Wi-Fi issues in Upper Hutt – Further work is planned for this
afternoon to extend wired connections to all agents, with the intent of further enhancing call quality.
Call centre grade headsets will also be deployed this afternoon, enhancing user and public call
experience
•  IT Service Desk Monitoring – There were 250 calls into the desk yesterday, an increase of 65% on
last Monday, but within expectations and no major issues to report.  Tuesday has already been
busier than yesterday, but all manageable.
Customer
GENERAL UPDATE:
Services
•  There has been an increased volume of enquiries received since the Advanced Voting Period started.
Since yesterday, the team had 1,238 tickets resolved, received 91 phone calls and made 18 outbound
calls. 91% of tickets were resolved in one-touch. Telnet received 4,423 calls, and 325 emails.
•  The top enquiry was about EasyVote (22%), followed by Where to Vote (19%) and Update details
(15%). 29% of calls were triggered by website information.
•  There are 33 complaints on hand across the business units.
Communications
GENERAL UPDATE:
and Education
Preparing to publish advance voting numbers on vote.nz at about 2pm once numbers have been

checked. Numbers will also be published on social media.
Media
•  DCE, Operations interview on The Breeze this morning
•  Facilitating a lot of requests from media for filming at voting places
•  Themes – first day of voting, overseas voting, EasyVote packs, no ‘I voted’ stickers this year, Te Pati
Māori complaint regarding Act’s plane use, political signage near voting places in malls
•  Communication to go out regarding” you don’t need an EasyVote pack to vote”.
Social Media
Themes - stickers, Greens advertising in a mall, EasyVote delivery.
Daily metrics
Heavy volume of enquiries across all our channels for the first day of voting:
•  26 media enquiries
•  670 enquiries and comments on social media in the last 24 hours (an increase of 180% compared to
the past 24 hours)
•  251, 546 visitors to vote.nz (an increase of 350% on the previous day)

Action
•  Prepare a message for the website on when to expect your EasyVote packs and you don’t need
an EasyVote pack to vote.
•  Prepare some reactive FAQs on EasyVote packs for Enquiries, Telnet and Voting Services
Engagement staff.

Legal & Policy
GENERAL UPDATE/ISSUES
•  NZ Loyal served the Commission with a letter of demand on 2 October and a draft statement of
claim. Their lawyers have indicated they are instructed to commence proceedings in the High Court
by 11am on 3 October if the Commission does not accept their candidates on the party’s list.  Crown
Law has been instructed by the Legal team on this matter. They have alleged issues with access to
the Party Portal and Election Management System (EMS). We are working with the IT team on a
chronology timeline.
•  Following up on alleged buffer zone advertising breaches brought to our attention yesterday.

Action
•  Reminder to Electoral Managers of what the buffer zone is
Strategic
GENERAL UPDATE:
Engagement and
•  Multiple enquiries regarding EasyVote packs not arriving in time – providing reassurance that people
Partnership
can still participate even if they have not received them.
•  Engagement staff across the country are moving into Voting Services work and so likely to have less
opportunity for insight gathering.
Security &
GENERAL UPDATE:
Integrity
Four Security Incidents reported from the field yesterday:
Type
Reported
Resolved
Filming and disruption
2
2
Suspicious behaviour
1
1
Guard quality
1
1
•  Two incidents of filming at Voting Places (VPs). Both handled by Voting Place Manager
•

6(c)
Assessed that this was likely general suspicious behaviour, not targeted at the Election
•  Guard with insufficient training sent home and alarms set. New guard organised.