EXCLUSIVE: Why you must boycott Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton and Tauranga local elections next year

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
29
5

Fuck off!

Auckland Council backs online voting plan

Auckland Council is rejecting claims a new online voting system will be dangerous for New Zealanders. An Australian IT expert told Morning Report yesterday New Zealand could face widespread electoral fraud if it adopts online voting for local government elections. Nine councils including Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton and Tauranga want to use online voting at next year’s elections. Marguerite Delbet is general manager of Democracy Services at Auckland Council. She talks to Guyon Espiner.

What is the point of your vote if it can be hacked and external forces can implement their own candidates?
‪
If you vote in local elections that have online voting in the post-Snowden world you are merely providing endorsement for an electoral system that is corrupt  – you must boycott or be complicit in giving that rigged system credibility.
Don’t let the Wellington bureaucrat scum bags  rob you of the one final power you have, your vote.
TDB will be leading the boycott against online voting next year while also running competitions to hack the systems to highlight their vulnerability. We will not allow the Wellington bureaucrat scum bags  to rob us of our democracy just to save some fucking dollars.
Stay tuned.

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29 COMMENTS

  1. Martyn, I know from direct experience that local elections are already rigged to ensure the right candidates are ‘elected’.

    We live in a faux democracy.

      • The local newspaper ran hit pieces on candidates that opposed business-as-usual, describing them as ‘rogues and rascals’ and deliberately misreported what they said at meetings.

        Community meetings were rigged to provide favoured candidates with additional speaking rights, and the local newspaper misreported what happened.

        Vested interest groups poured vast amounts of money into getting favoured candidates elected via advertising.

        Community meetings and meet-the-candidate events at the council chambers were chaired by people with strong connections to business; questions were carefully vetted to ensure none of the crucial issues affecting the future of the district were discussed.

        With respect to national elections, television debates were always carefully orchestrated to ensure mention nothing of significance that would challenge business-as-usual (i.e. peak oil, abrupt climate change, the phony monetary system, overpopulation and overconsumption etc.) was ever mentioned. I stopped taking any interest in such phony television ‘debates’ more than a decade ago because it was obvious what was happening….voters were being manipulated.

        We live in a faux democracy – a rigged game run by banks, corporations and opportunists- in which money buys power and those in power ensure it stays with them. That is why it makes no difference which party forms the core of government; policies remain essentially the same, just as we are witnessing right now with respect to the Adern government after all the hype and promise of reform.

    • I am not convinced that online voting must always be prone to hacking. It might be true for the present system but there must be hack-proof methods. If the government ran a national banking system and every adult had an account in it. plus the usual credit card, that could be justified as a way of taking on the present rigged system banking system. the credit card would be no more vulnerable to hacking than any other card (there was such a thing as a Bankcard once but the banks destroyed it).
      If that card also had the the function of an ID card, giving DNA details, essential medical history etc, the Bankcard the card would be invaluable on a number of levels and ought to be hack-proof.

      • Dream on, these are incompetent councils that in Auckland spent 1 billion dollars on failed IT to unify the supercity, got their own evidence thrown out for the unitary plan because it was not compliant with the law and recently realised they put through 100’s of non compliant resource consents. This is a council that can’t even oversee Auckland Transport correctly which itself can’t even consult properly over a cycle lane, Ports of Auckland that have some of the worst industrial relations with staff. Maybe the ferry even killed someone the other month!

        Tauranga council signed of Bella Vista the new homes that were not habitable before being moved into…

        These people can’t even do the basics, let alone trust them with democracy!

        Part of their issue is that they are incapable of following good advice such as “An Australian IT expert told Morning Report yesterday New Zealand could face widespread electoral fraud if it adopts online voting for local government elections”.

        Instead the councils seek advice from people that are out to screw public money with bad advice… such as saving money with on line voting. Like supercity will be a disaster, both for the amount it will cost as well as their dream to destroy democracy (starting with making sure elected councillors were not on Auckland Transport board which takes 1/2 of Aucklanders rates and is dysfunctional) so their fiefdoms can flourish.

      • No, there’s no online voting system that can be made hack proof with any current or near-future technology.

        Every online voting system ever introduced has been hacked at some point, and all the ones currently deployed in the US are so open it’s a total joke. One was even recently hacked by an 11 year old.

        As for Five Eyes governments’ fevered wish to have back doors installed into otherwise secure online communications systems and platforms like iOS.

        This is magical thinking from bureaucrats and/or tech-naive control freaks desperate to snoop on everyone or save a quick buck.

        • I don’t know what system is being proposed for these local body elections, but if it’s the same proprietary system that was proposed for the last lot, I agree it’s ridiculous and must be stopped (again). But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Everyone who is concerned about the future of elections needs to watch this presentation on ‘Elections with both Privacy and Integrity’ by cryptographer Josh Benaloh:
          https://crysp.uwaterloo.ca/speakers/20170313-Benaloh

          Josh explains a system of electronic voting that can even more secure and secret than the Australian ballot (the system of secret votes in polling booths as used in general elections), and certainly a lot more secure than postal voting (as well as being cheaper). Obviously any system that implements his model for public elections must be free code, so it’s security can be audited by anyone who cares to examine the code, and parties/ candidates can nominate or hire technical scrutineers to examine it before the election and make sure its implemented properly. It needs to be built and maintained by people who work fulltime for a neutral public body like the Electoral Commission, and the copyright owned by the public, not a private company.

      • Computer voting would effectively put an end to electoral fraud – so long as we are willing to dispense with the secret ballot, the sacred cow of modern representative “democracies”.
        Continuous election and the open ballot employing computer technology are the only way forward to genuine democracy in our time.

      • We should just txt our vote in.

        The security and surveillance are already in place, and each phone’s id is unique and known to the network, so it can be billed.

        Those without phones can vote at the post office using the normal forms / paper ID.

  3. This will be interesting, given that for the first time ever, due to the great Wellington bustastrophe, Wellingtonians have finally clicked onto the importance of voting in Local Body elections and next year making sure that certain councillors do not get their seats back! (If they have the guts to re-stand)

    On that alone I can see why Greater Wellington Regional Council would love to have a voter boycott. And were it not for the bus issue I would for the first time ever refuse to vote, so what the hell are we meant to do, seriously?

    • Katie: “And were it not for the bus issue I would for the first time ever refuse to vote, so what the hell are we meant to do, seriously?”

      Exactly. And given that neither WCC nor GWRC listens to voters about any damn thing – let alone the bustastrophe, about which many Wellingtonians warned of looming problems well beforehand – I’m guessing that there’s little point in us protesting about an online vote.

      Maybe a boycott is the only option, even though the Councillors who should be voted out, may be re-elected. If they have the barefaced effrontery to stand again. And that wouldn’t surprise me….

  4. “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

    ~Plato~

    • I’m tired of hacks misquoting intellectual giants to make themselves feel better.

      Voting is not politics
      Elections are not politics

      How our economy works – that is politics.

      So rather than offer up a quote, which is completely of out of context. Get a life.

  5. voting on line is easily corrupted…all the experts say so… so it is no real election voting at all !

    ….and just look at the on-line fiasco of the last general census…it was no valid General Census at all!

  6. Well, Martin, it’s not only No Zealanders who get to vote… foreign residents do, too… and, remember there’s a spy from a foreign dictatorship, the largest on the planet, in “our” No Zealand parliament…

  7. I suppose they will get people identify themselves via Real Me or so. Indeed, I would have great hesitations to vote online, no matter what great assurances the government and so give us.

  9. The Auckland Council have run 2 public consultation online recently about future options for public land – basically they are hell bent of selling it. Both were incredibly biased towards a predetermined outcome. In both a national lobby group block voted submissions online (around 650 submissions in 24hrs in the first consultation) goodness knows how many in the second. There was no requirement or way to identify where submitters lived but the council counted them anyway. The Auckland Council has proven beyond doubt that they are incapable, or unconcerned about running objective and fair consultations online (or offline for that matter) and I’m sure the same applies to them running elections.

  10. “means every election after that is a joke.”

    So are all those that have gone before.

    It’s always the same sort of people who turn up as candidates. Most of the time we’ve never heard of them. When they’re appointed, they’re never heard of again.

    They stand for nothing and represent their own kind and interest groups only. They bed in like ticks and it’s only infirmity and the promise of a mention in the Queen’s Birthday list that removes their rears from the comfy seats.

    Let’s do it on line: fewer voters, and who gives a toss anyway? We’d never know or notice…

  11. In Wellington it’s bloody sacrilege if you don’t go out of your way to vote out the bastards who brought in the bus system. OUT.OF.YOUR.WAY.

    • Z: “In Wellington it’s bloody sacrilege if you don’t go out of your way to vote out the bastards who brought in the bus system. OUT.OF.YOUR.WAY.”

      Exactly. It’s our sacred duty as citizens to vote the bastards out. But we don’t trust the aforementioned bastards to run a well-found online voting system. Devil: meet deep blue sea.

  13. Lets get better hackers to make sure we win the election !

    Can’t wait for a new general election , amazing how the Greens won 65% of the vote and National only 22% and with such an accurate prediction by the centre – left in advance of the result .

    E-elections are less about democracy and more about which side has the most money and the best hackers.

    E-elections are easy to use , but also easy to control .Another tool from the neoliberal toolbox .

    Personally I don’t mind giving up 5 mins every 3 yrs to obtain a just electoral outcome .

    A very dangerous precedent .I will stick with paper .

  14. We should just txt our vote in.

    The security and surveillance are already in place, and each phone’s id is unique and known to the network, so it can be billed.

    Those without phones can vote at the post office using the normal forms / paper ID.

Comments are closed.