Dan Lacey (@danlacey)

Advance voting at the NZ Elections - is it secure? Here's the Electoral Commission's response to my recent Official Information Act request re: advance voting. To sum up: - Some kind of assessment is done to see if voting materials can be stored overnight. - Materials will then either be stored overnight, the "main option" was to return them to electorate headquarters for overnight storage, or they were taken home by the advanced voting manager. - All boxes use a security seal, although it's unclear at what point this goes on and what type of seal it is. - Some kind of tracking system is used for all materials, although it's unclear what sort. It sounds reasonable on the face of it, but playing devil's advocate, this system places a lot of trust in the people involved and the explanation of it leaves a lot of ambiguity. From what I know of this system so far, if I intended specifically to see or alter advance votes, I would try and infiltrate HQ. The "main option" for all advance votes being stored is at HQ, the equipment is all tracked there to be stored. Once there, what happens? Could boxes be switched? If anything were to happen to the advance votes, I think that's where it would happen. It would be too much effort and cover-up to have many advance voting managers involved for much smaller results.