“The Prime Minister should read all of the Hunn-Smith review of the general election and listen to the lessons learned rather than trying to make political points,” National MP Wyatt Creech said today.

“It’s clutching at straws to say that all the election’s problems were a result of a staffing issue. The report itself doesn’t even say that.

“It identifies the holding of two referenda – and the failure to count the general poll results first – as the single over-riding factor behind the election-night problems.

“There is a huge range of other issues that need to be resolved before the next election and I hope Miss Clark will look at them.

“It’s becoming a hallmark of this government to blame others ,” Mr Creech said.

Ends

Attached: List of key findings from the report
Key findings

 “There is no way to tell whether or not the availability of experienced court officers to act as Returning Officers would have improved the overall management of the process….(pg 16)

Referenda
 “this added to the relatively straight forward but important process of sorting the various papers into the three issues…clearly this added significantly to the workload compared with 1996…

 “the holding of 2 referenda at the same time as the parliamentary vote has come through, combined with the fatigue factor, as probably the single most important cause of the election night difficulty… (pg 31)

Transmission of results

 The instruction for the transmission of the results for the party and electorate votes from polling place to HQ was clearly unsatisfactory…(pg 27)

 “We are somewhat puzzled by the apparent lack of communication between ROS and CEO when it became apparent that the results were not being received at expected times…” (pg 37).

 “We are aware of one electoral district, and there may be others, where technology was down during the crucial period approaching and immediately after the close of the poll…final results were not received until 2.26am…(pg29)

Information to overseas voters…
 “the confusion in the wording of the letter and the lateness of the dispatch to registered voters meant they could not register their vote in time…” (pg 24)

General

 Too much reliance was placed on the validity of experiments done on polling, sorting etc

 “Concern expressed at the process used to assess polling places, nature of booths and as a consequence staffing numbers and arrangements

 Too much authority and decision making was left with the Returning Officers

 There was no rigorous analysis of the training needs for a new and more complex system

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