Errors in the printing process of the Hastings information and candidate profiles has resulted in 27 profiles being left out of the booklet.

A former Hawke’s Bay mayor is calling for a reprint of Hastings booklets delivered with voting papers after 27 candidate profiles were missed out. Former Napier mayor Barbara Arnott said it might not be mandatory to reprint the profiles, but morally, it has to be redone because nobody knows how it will affect the results.

The mistake was noticed by Sue and Collin (who didn’t want their last names used) on Friday after their voting papers were delivered to the James Wattie Retirement Village in Havelock North.

“I always vote,” Sue said. “Because we have only been in Hawke’s Bay for 10 years, we are not familiar with all the candidates. So, I was looking through the profiles to learn more.”

But when she got to page 12, the next page was not 13 but 29. “I just expected it to be there, but the entire middle section was missing.”

ElectionsNZ chief returning officer Warwick Lampp said the mistake was caused by a printing error in the binding of the booklet. “We received fewer than 10 calls about it, so it’s not widespread, which is good,” Lampp said. “Anyone who got one of these booklets should call the council or the 0800 number on the voting papers.”

Hastings District Council has delivered correct booklets to the retirement village

But Arnott, who was mayor from 2001 to 2013, says here could be hundreds more faulty booklets out there. “They have no idea how many are affected,” Arnott said. “I know it would be an expense to redo them, but we live in a democracy based on everyone getting a fair deal.”

The sole missing mayoral candidate profile was that of Darrin Wilson.

Wilson is also standing for council and that profile with the 16 other Hastings/Havelock North General Ward candidates, Sayeed Ahmed. John Bennett, Michael Fowler, Gus Freeman, Steve Gibson, Bernard Hickey, Rizwaana Latiff, Yvonne Lorkin, Lucie-Jane McElwee. Simon Nixon, Nick Ratcliffe, Rion Roben, Callum Ross, Jacqueline Supra, Debbie Ward and Kevin Watkins are missing.

As are the two Flaxmere candidates, Henry Heke and Henare O’Keefe, the three Mohaka General Ward candidates, Pagen Goldstone, Derek Nowell-Usticke, Kirsty Scott-McLean and four of the five Takitimu Māori Ward candidates, Siiam Daniel, Sarah Greening, Kellie Jessup and Bevan O’Connor. It resumes on page 29 with Hether Te Au-Skipworth‘s profile.

Wilson said he wasn’t worried about it. “It will be what it will be,” he said. “I’ve spoken at heaps of events and people know how I feel.”

Ōpōtiki, Whanganui and South Wairarapa districts all had issues with Māori wards not appearing in candidate booklets.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.

BayBuzz Editor: Extensive information on these missing candidates, and all candidates standing in HB, can be found at BayBuzz’s Election Central website.

And here is the explanation given by ElectionNZ Returns Officer Warwick Lampp:

Kia ora Hastings DC candidates,

You may have heard by now that yesterday morning we were made aware of a printing issue with a small number of candidate profile booklets that were sent to voters in Havelock North.

We received 6 calls about this yesterday morning to the council and our call centre, from the James Wattie Village in Te Aute Rd, and one adjacent property, where the middle section of the booklet has been omitted, and some front and back sections duplicated.  Pages 13-28 were completely missing in each case.

From investigations at my end, I think this is contained to a very small number.  I have seen this happen in previous elections from time to time.  The third-party printer has advised that this is a manual collation error for a handful of booklets that we reprinted in a very small batch.  Their expectation is that this could have affected 10-20 booklets, because that is the number of booklets that these are usually batched in by the printer.

As soon as we were aware of this, Louise Stettner, Deputy Electoral Officer, went to J W Village in person and delivered a box of 100 replacement booklets, which have now been distributed to those that enquired.  We have not had any further calls or emails about this today, nor yesterday afternoon.

As we all know the candidate profiles and videos are also on the council website, which we mentioned to each caller as well.

If anyone hears of this anywhere else please let me know asap, but at this point, it looks like this is contained to a small number of electors in that specific location.  I apologise for the confusion this may have caused.