Is there any significant evidence for charging them with?
Another possibility which (without much context) seems plausible is that the candidates themselves had nothing to do with the likely fraud, and it's more the work of someone else who's conspired to get the group elected without their involvement.
Well that’s what the police investigation is about. I find it hard to believe that the candidates themselves knew nothing about it. Even if they didn’t, and that’s a big if, the corruption would come later when the people who got them elected would be coming to get what they wanted to achieve by orchestrating this.
yeah its probably quite easy to prove there was fraud, but alot harder to say someone knowingly participated unless they were dumb about it. its plausible (if unlikely) that someone else orchestrated and committed the fraud, and they arent involved
Thank god, I was legitimately afraid of the path our country would go down if the judge used the narrower interpretation of the law. This is a great decision for our democracy.
Now the Police need to do a thorough job with the criminal investigations and hold these people to account.
Of course it’s papatoetoe, the otara subdivision brought it to my attention on Facebook a month ago. They said that the paptoetoe area was cutting them out of any decision involving their combined board after the election because they had majority and which meant that no representation of otara would be included in decision involving otara from the council level for the foreseeable future.
Auckland Council chief executive Phil Wilson described the case as an isolated incident in one part of one local board area, Papatoetoe, and assured Aucklanders that elections have delivered robust results for many years.
It isn't isolated though Phil and not the first time Papatoetoe has been the centre of voter fraud allegations and police investigations. Dismissing it as a one off doesn’t build confidence in the New Zealand's democracy and voting system which is under attack.
An easy way to narrow eligibility would be for the law to only allow people with NZ citizenship only to run, like in Australia.
Could restrict it further with rules like... You must have been an NZ tax resident for the past three years. Must have not been outside of NZ for more than six months in the past three years etc.
An easy way to narrow eligibility would be for the law to only allow people with NZ citizenship only to run, like in Australia.
This would not be easy. It's been disastrous in Australia, with elected MPs/Senators being randomly turfed out of parliament when some new fact about their family history is uncovered.
On top of that, because several countries do not allow citizens to renounce citizenship, Australia's High Court has had to invent a loophole that says those people are allowed to be in parliament anyway; obviously this is the fair and just way to interpret the Australian Constitution, but it's still an interpretation that flatly contradicts the actual text, and I think it's just generally bad to be in a situation where in order to make things work you have to agree that the law means something other than what it actually says.
This is also probably what would happen if some hostile country attempted to manipulate the composition of the Australian parliament by foisting their own citizenship upon Australian politicians; there would invariably be some court ruling declaring that the citizenship provision doesn't apply in those cases because the relevant people didn't actively acquire it through their own actions. The Australian courts' approach to the problems created is essentially to pretend the constitution doesn't exist in those cases where applying it would be inconvenient. That's a sign of a bad law.
Apart from citizenships that can't be given up and citizenships that might be granted against your will, the big problems with section 44 of Australia's constitution that make it such a nightmare are that: (a) countries do not have big lists of everyone who is a citizen; (b) not every country has the same citizenship laws as one another; and (c) not every country has the same citizenship laws now as they did in the past.
Simply knowing your family history and the citizenship laws of every country in the world won't be sufficient: you have to know what the laws were over the course of the entire twentieth century at least. Looking up every previous version of a law over that time period is a difficult task even in New Zealand where so much has been digitised. Are there countries that let citizenship be inherited beyond two generations? Have there been such countries in the past 125 years?
When imperial colonies became independent and had to create their own citizenships from scratch, it was common to declare that the current crop of citizens was made up of anyone who was born within the new country's borders; but are there any countries that took a more expansive view? Did anyone say "well, we have a lot of long-serving, loyal, foreign-born imperial civil servants helping to run our government apparatus and we don't want to kick them out, so they'll be citizens too"? There are a lot of former colonies out there, so, maybe! Imagine having to research not just where your grandparents were born, but every job they ever had! At least the British colonies tended to write their laws in English.
How does adoption interact, now and over the course of the twentieth century, with citizenship? Imagine Alice, an immigrant from Country A to Country B, gives birth to a child that she gives up for adoption; the child's birth certificate is updated with the new family's information, the records of the adoption are sealed, and the child grows up never knowing he was adopted, believing his mother is Brenda, a native of Country B. Does the child's citizenship of Country A, inherited from his birth mother, survive the adoption? Does Country A respect the documents saying the child was legally born to Brenda and conclude he is not a citizen, or do they respect the physical fact of his birth to Alice and conclude he is a citizen? In the latter case, the child would grow up possessing a citizenship that it would be virtually impossible for him to even find out about! (Is this even written down in statute, or do you have to look to court decisions of Country A to determine the question? Add another research task to the list: not just the present and historical statutes of every country on earth, but judicial decisions clarifying any relevant ambiguities!) Likewise for a foundling who was raised in state care, never legally adopted for anyone and thus having no parents listed in any legal record.
Section 44 is completely unworkable. Australia deals with this by pretending that the problems don't exist: after the several years of election results being voided out of nowhere, the current equilibrium is that political candidates look up where their parents and grandparents were born and they check the current laws of those countries and renounce any citizenships they find through this process. This is likely to catch most double-citizenships but if you actually care about enforcing the constitution it is completely inadequate for the reasons I gave above. But if a law is so badly conceived that trying to properly enforce it is an entirely hopeless case, you should change the law!
No, that's not correct. You do have to be a citizen to run.
The commenter appears to be suggesting that people with dual citizenship shouldn't be able to run (but has articulated it poorly) like in Australia. Which is a terrible idea. That stupid law has caused so many problems in Australia. There have been numerous Australian politicians who have discovered that they have NZ citizenship that they never knew about. It also discourages diversity.
Thank god enough people went to the trouble to cast a special vote in the election, after their ballot paper was stolen, otherwise this wouldn’t have ever been uncovered.
I hope the police investigation sorts these muppets out properly. This doesn’t even bar them from running again does it?
From what I’ve just been reading no it doesn’t. Various candidate info FAQs say a criminal record doesn’t matter.
If they are indeed charged with electoral fraud and found guilty, seems ludicrous they could run again.
Seems ludicrous that anyone would vote for them again.
In fairness, it's not like a lot of the votes they received this time were from people who would vote for them.
Bro the amount of people who love a facist is scary
You have more faith in the average NZ voter than I do.
A double murderer ran for the Maungakiekie Tāmaki Local Board this election.
Guess once you’ve done your time you’re welcome to be involved in politics…
Is there any significant evidence for charging them with?
Another possibility which (without much context) seems plausible is that the candidates themselves had nothing to do with the likely fraud, and it's more the work of someone else who's conspired to get the group elected without their involvement.
Well that’s what the police investigation is about. I find it hard to believe that the candidates themselves knew nothing about it. Even if they didn’t, and that’s a big if, the corruption would come later when the people who got them elected would be coming to get what they wanted to achieve by orchestrating this.
From what I understand the election has been declared invalid, but no individual has actually been convicted.
Obviously it's implied the winners are implicated, but they can't be barred on that assumption alone.
yeah its probably quite easy to prove there was fraud, but alot harder to say someone knowingly participated unless they were dumb about it. its plausible (if unlikely) that someone else orchestrated and committed the fraud, and they arent involved
There is a separate police investigation that is ongoing.
The article was quite clear that the judge was only assessing the integrity of the election result.
Hopefully the police investigation mentioned has dozens of prosecutions for this.
Horrific conduct, desecrating democracy like that. Hope they get properly charged.
Thank god, I was legitimately afraid of the path our country would go down if the judge used the narrower interpretation of the law. This is a great decision for our democracy.
Now the Police need to do a thorough job with the criminal investigations and hold these people to account.
Of course it’s papatoetoe, the otara subdivision brought it to my attention on Facebook a month ago. They said that the paptoetoe area was cutting them out of any decision involving their combined board after the election because they had majority and which meant that no representation of otara would be included in decision involving otara from the council level for the foreseeable future.
Shady people these pap lot are.
Good, this needed to happen. Now they need to be investigated, and given the absolute maximum penalties the law can inflict.
It isn't isolated though Phil and not the first time Papatoetoe has been the centre of voter fraud allegations and police investigations. Dismissing it as a one off doesn’t build confidence in the New Zealand's democracy and voting system which is under attack.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/manukau-courier/9745124/Detention-for-Sikh-leader
Surely this is extremely serious, corruption of such a blatant nature, NZ hasn’t experienced this before afaik.
Investigate if guilty through the book at them.
I’m disappointed how little coverage these fraud cases (truck drivers licenses, and this) get on TV news.
To me this is indicative of some serious issues that will only get worse because the consequences are virtually zero.
Cheating pays in NZ.
Well yes, after all, hundreds of millions were stolen from the government in the 80s and 90s, and we gave the perpetrators a knighthood.
Fraud is more accepted culturally in India. Look at the overseas licence conversion fraud that's been imported to NZ. Shut these pricks down.
If you're not commiting fraud. Are you even trying?
An easy way to narrow eligibility would be for the law to only allow people with NZ citizenship only to run, like in Australia.
Could restrict it further with rules like... You must have been an NZ tax resident for the past three years. Must have not been outside of NZ for more than six months in the past three years etc.
This would not be easy. It's been disastrous in Australia, with elected MPs/Senators being randomly turfed out of parliament when some new fact about their family history is uncovered.
On top of that, because several countries do not allow citizens to renounce citizenship, Australia's High Court has had to invent a loophole that says those people are allowed to be in parliament anyway; obviously this is the fair and just way to interpret the Australian Constitution, but it's still an interpretation that flatly contradicts the actual text, and I think it's just generally bad to be in a situation where in order to make things work you have to agree that the law means something other than what it actually says.
This is also probably what would happen if some hostile country attempted to manipulate the composition of the Australian parliament by foisting their own citizenship upon Australian politicians; there would invariably be some court ruling declaring that the citizenship provision doesn't apply in those cases because the relevant people didn't actively acquire it through their own actions. The Australian courts' approach to the problems created is essentially to pretend the constitution doesn't exist in those cases where applying it would be inconvenient. That's a sign of a bad law.
Apart from citizenships that can't be given up and citizenships that might be granted against your will, the big problems with section 44 of Australia's constitution that make it such a nightmare are that: (a) countries do not have big lists of everyone who is a citizen; (b) not every country has the same citizenship laws as one another; and (c) not every country has the same citizenship laws now as they did in the past.
Simply knowing your family history and the citizenship laws of every country in the world won't be sufficient: you have to know what the laws were over the course of the entire twentieth century at least. Looking up every previous version of a law over that time period is a difficult task even in New Zealand where so much has been digitised. Are there countries that let citizenship be inherited beyond two generations? Have there been such countries in the past 125 years?
When imperial colonies became independent and had to create their own citizenships from scratch, it was common to declare that the current crop of citizens was made up of anyone who was born within the new country's borders; but are there any countries that took a more expansive view? Did anyone say "well, we have a lot of long-serving, loyal, foreign-born imperial civil servants helping to run our government apparatus and we don't want to kick them out, so they'll be citizens too"? There are a lot of former colonies out there, so, maybe! Imagine having to research not just where your grandparents were born, but every job they ever had! At least the British colonies tended to write their laws in English.
How does adoption interact, now and over the course of the twentieth century, with citizenship? Imagine Alice, an immigrant from Country A to Country B, gives birth to a child that she gives up for adoption; the child's birth certificate is updated with the new family's information, the records of the adoption are sealed, and the child grows up never knowing he was adopted, believing his mother is Brenda, a native of Country B. Does the child's citizenship of Country A, inherited from his birth mother, survive the adoption? Does Country A respect the documents saying the child was legally born to Brenda and conclude he is not a citizen, or do they respect the physical fact of his birth to Alice and conclude he is a citizen? In the latter case, the child would grow up possessing a citizenship that it would be virtually impossible for him to even find out about! (Is this even written down in statute, or do you have to look to court decisions of Country A to determine the question? Add another research task to the list: not just the present and historical statutes of every country on earth, but judicial decisions clarifying any relevant ambiguities!) Likewise for a foundling who was raised in state care, never legally adopted for anyone and thus having no parents listed in any legal record.
Section 44 is completely unworkable. Australia deals with this by pretending that the problems don't exist: after the several years of election results being voided out of nowhere, the current equilibrium is that political candidates look up where their parents and grandparents were born and they check the current laws of those countries and renounce any citizenships they find through this process. This is likely to catch most double-citizenships but if you actually care about enforcing the constitution it is completely inadequate for the reasons I gave above. But if a law is so badly conceived that trying to properly enforce it is an entirely hopeless case, you should change the law!
Part of Aussie constitution right?
So it'd require a constitutional amendment which is an absolute pain in the rear. Not as bad as US but still a pain.
Wow, did not know that. So a tourist could run? Lol. I'm all for a free open democracy but there has to be some basic requirements.
No, that's not correct. You do have to be a citizen to run.
The commenter appears to be suggesting that people with dual citizenship shouldn't be able to run (but has articulated it poorly) like in Australia. Which is a terrible idea. That stupid law has caused so many problems in Australia. There have been numerous Australian politicians who have discovered that they have NZ citizenship that they never knew about. It also discourages diversity.
Oh good. Thanks.
Corruption in politics?! No way!?? From that party?! Who would have thought!!
Which party?
The action team!
Not my kinda party
any criminality identified, these gents may be the beneficiaries of some unknown, unrelated 3rd party...
(go ahead and downvote, im just asking the question...)
Well well well
send them all back
They're going to get a strongly-worded letter to say how disappointed we are in their behaviour
PUNISHMENT INCOMING
Get out and vote, that's how you fix this.
Edit, it takes a lot more than that, but voting really helps.
Thank god enough people went to the trouble to cast a special vote in the election, after their ballot paper was stolen, otherwise this wouldn’t have ever been uncovered.