Court lets vote fraudster off

The Stuff reports:

A man with intellectual limitations has been given a suspended sentence after admitting voting 11 times in last year’s General Election.

The police’s details on the case do not disclose which party Michael Shane Turner voted for.

Christchurch District Court Judge John Strettell said the 45-year-old did know the difference between right and wrong but he had “a more limited understanding of the implications of this than one would expect of the general public”. …

On election day, September 23, he cast four special votes at various locations.

The police summary of facts lists all the locations and dates.

All the votes were for the same party and candidate.

Turner told police he voted multiple times to boost the vote numbers for his chosen party, but said he did not know it was wrong to vote more than once.

I have some sympathy for him, but I’m not sure I believe him. He knew enough to go to different voting places for each vote, which would have been deliberate. If he had tried to vote more than once at the one place, he would have been told he can’t.

He ordered that Turner “come up for sentence within six months if called upon”, which means that if he offends again he can be recalled on this charge and sentenced on it. But otherwise there is no penalty.

Which means if he does the same next election, then there are no consequences for what he did this election.

The Electoral Commission obviously detected the multiple voting when they did the scrutiny of the rolls after the election. I do wonder whether we should be not just scrutinising them after the election, but during the voting period.

It would be simple for each advance polling place and polling place to have a tablet where names of those voting and recorded and transmitted to the central office. The database could instantly detect if the same name has voted more than once, and be investigated straight away.