14/10/2023–ELECTION DAY
As at 8.00am (verbal) and 1.00pm on 14/10/2023 prepared by Crispian
Distributed
All GEDT/ELT members
to
Key
Anusha Guler and Crispian
Contacts
Previous
3 ELT Standup SITREPS 5 13102023 - FINAL.docx
ELT SITREP
Overview
Summary of the current event
• ELECTION DAY
• eRoll issues
• Red weather warning for Canterbury
• 1pm updates are in light blue.
Voting
GENERAL UPDATE
Services
Overseas Operations
• Four Overseas Voting Place left to close, they will all be closed by 1500 today.
• Over 93,000 Overseas Votes have been issued, with over 66,000 Overseas Votes received.
• Dictation Registrations closed at 742, with 701 Votes Issued. Dictation Voting closes at 1900.
Auckland North Region
• Advance Votes were safely transported and secured at Head Quarters.
• Large amounts of ordinary counts.
• Long queues at voting places, prior to the issue with E-roll. Re-allocating staff to these places.
•
6(c)
• Democracy NZ scrutineers (representative of Integrity Project) are a concern and will be a greater concern
at the 7pm timeline. Escalation process to be utilised if any issues occur. There are 4 scrutineers at
Headquarters.
• Allied guard not turned up at one voting place.
Auckland South Region
• An additional Mobile Team will be working at Middlemore Hospital, as per request. The team will be
there from 9am - 4pm.
• Some political party billboards have not been removed.
• Not many queues at the malls.
• Preliminary counts are progressing well.
• At the Botany electorate, the Logistics & Supplies Manager was stressed and left. Back-up person to cover
this evening.
Central North Island Region
• Final Advance Voting Place closed at 8pm, packed up to headquarters.
• No staffing issues at the moment.
• Police being called to a Rotorua voting place. A member of the public became agitated due to the queue
and became aggressive. Awaiting on more information, including to whom he directed his agitation and if
our staff were affected. No issues with staff.
• Queues is an issue across high profile voting places e.g malls.
Lower North Island Region
• Minor staff issues.
• Managing an issue regarding an agreed opening time at 9am for a Voting Place instead of 10am.
South Island Region
• The night shift guard was not on site at 6.45am but his belonging was on-site. Contacted Allied to get a
response. The next guard arrived 8am.
• One of the Voting Place Manager was in hospital and was replaced with another manager.
• Met Service has issued a red wind warning for Canterbury; Waimate in the south to Hanmer in the north,
until 5pm today. Civil Emergency Management (CEM) have advised they have never issued a red warning
for Canterbury before. They are expecting trees down, power outages and closed roads. Winds have
certainly become very strong here in Christchurch in the last half hour.
• Regional Manager has advised all 10 electorates in the affected area to warn their staff, especially their
drivers, to take safe shelter away from trees and powerlines or not go out if they feel at all concerned.
• 3 x Voting Places without power - West Eyreton School Hall and Tuahiwi in Waimakariri electorate and
Tai Tapu School in Selwyn electorate. These Voting Places are
opened, but without power.
• Adventure Bike Park voting place has closed; and removed from the website. Staff reallocated to other
Voting Places. There will be communication on our website to notify voters.
• Some voters have requested take away votes due to the weather conditions.
• There are more scrutineers than expected. and they are slowing down the counts with asking plenty of
questions due to lack of understanding of the process and wanting to write all the results down.
• Leithfield School Hall, Sefton, Balcain Community Centre and the hub in Amberley have all lost power
(this is in the Kaikoura electorate) and Cust Community Centre (Waimakariri electorate). These Voting
Places are still
open. Arranging a generator for Amberley.
•
Closed Tihiraki North Loburn School in North Canterbury area (2.30pm), (Kaikoura electorate) due to two
fallen trees blocking access, and a burst water tank causing flooding. The staff are currently unable to
leave due to the blocked access. The nearest voting place is Loburn School Te Kura Aromauta 4.7km away.
Ballot boxes will be transported to Loburn School Te Kura Aromauta.
• Waipara school has had to evacuate due to powerlines being down. Voting Place is
closed (3.28pm).
Ballots are being transferred to Amberley Library.
Voting Services:
• eRoll issue - Staff have been advised to revert
to their manual processes.
• Voting services team to expedite entering the Mobile Team to Middlemore Hospital into EMS.
• Security Guards join at the end of any queues at 7pm to stop late voters after the cut-off time.
Enrolment
GENERAL UPDATE:
• No major issue.
• 56K forms in queue.
• Overnight we received 9,000 online enrolments. It appears 3,000-4,000 of those may have come in
between 6am and 8am this morning. Large percentage of those will be overseas enrolments. Note that
enrolments for overseas electors closed at midnight Friday 13 October (the legislative change to allow for
enrolment on Election Day does not apply to overseas voters. May lead to problems for some overseas
voters wanting to download voting papers today.
• Checking-in with staff safety at Christchurch regarding the weather warning.
IT
GENERAL UPDATE: • All tasks completed at 11.30pm for Election Day preparation.
• IT support and security are here on-site from 7am onwards.
• eRoll server issues started around 10:05 and are continuing as at 12:05. Increasing capacity has not
solved the issue IT are continuing to investigate with Catalyst with Catalyst.
• eRoll issues
NOT RESOLVED. (1.18pm).
• eRoll issues has no impact on the count or release of results tonight.
• eRoll performing well at the moment, processing full load. (1.59pm)
Comms &
GENERAL UPDATE:
Education
• Very active overnight social media comments - 529 comments
•
6(c)
• Few complaints re queue at Voting Places, due to eRoll holding process up.
• Website visits– 240k up from 100k daily visits in the past week.
• Brief media statement to go out on the eRoll issue and on long queues at voting places and the ability to
vote if you are in the queue before 7pm.
• Political parties (and scrutineers) have raised the eRoll issue with the EC.
• Social Media comment regarding Richmond school, ran out of ballot papers. 20 people were turned away.
Customer
GENERAL UPDATE:
Services
• Around 1800 requests were received this morning, top enquiries were about How to Vote, Where to Vote
and Unable to get to a Voting Place. The majority of the contacts were triggered by Word of Mouth,
Brochure and our website.
• We are starting to receive phone calls from Christchurch as a Metservices alert has been issued for strong
winds advising not to drive and not leave the house. We are following ‘What if I can’t get to a voting
place’ response.
• Since yesterday, the team resolved 767 tickets, received 203 phone calls and made 19 outbound calls.
87% of tickets were resolved in one-touch. Telnet received 3,001 calls and 169 emails.
• More than 70,000 requests received since the campaign started.
Legal &
GENERAL UPDATE
Policy
• Distressing X post. Managing social media and various news apps displaying political candidate
advertisements. All under control. Escalation to Meta to take posts down.
• Provided clear guidelines for scrutineers to leave BY 7pm.
• OIA request from Rob Salmon, Labour regarding ability for people waiting at long queues to be able to
vote at 7pm.
Strategic
GENERAL UPDATE
Engagement
• Nothing to report
and
Partnership
Interagency
NEMA
Update
MetService contacted NEMA overnight to advise of an update of the wind warnings for the South Island.
Canterbury Plains and Christchurch are now expected to reach wind speeds of 140km/h from 0400hrs this
morning through to 1600hrs. Canterbury High Country are forecast to experience 150km/h gusts from
midnight through to 1600hrs this afternoon. Winds are expected to be at damaging speeds for a short period
but does have the potential to be significant. MetService also contacted Canterbury CDEM group directly to
advise them.
Wellington, Wairarapa, and Marlborough are expected to receive gales gusting up to 120km/hr in exposed
places.
NEMA Comment: NEMA remains in a monitoring state with no reports to date to indicate impacts from the
IN-CONFIDENCE
DAILY INTERAGENCY REPORT TO
GEDT
Submitted daily not later than 11am.
Date: 14 October 2023
DPMC:
NSTR
NZ Police:
No report yet
NEMA (Daily Intelligence Briefing attached):
MetService contacted NEMA overnight to advise of an update of the wind warnings for the South
Island. Canterbury Plains and Christchurch are now expected to reach wind speeds of 140km/h
from 0400hrs this morning through to 1600hrs. Canterbury High Country are forecast to
experience 150km/h gusts from midnight through to 1600hrs this afternoon. Winds are expected
to be at damaging speeds for a short period but does have the potential to be significant.
MetService also contacted Canterbury CDEM group directly to advise them.
Wellington, Wairarapa, and Marlborough are expected to receive gales gusting up to 120km/hr in
exposed places.
NEMA Comment: NEMA remains in a monitoring state with no reports to date to indicate impacts
from the weather. NEMA will advise the EC of any developments, if they occur.
GCSB:
NSTR
IN-CONFIDENCE
IN-CONFIDENCE
NZSIS:
Reporting via the JIG
MoH:
NSTR
Waka Kotahi:
https://www.journeys.nzta.govt.nz/highway-conditions/traffic-and-travel-list-view/
NSTR
MFAT:
NSTR
MoJ:
NSTR
FENZ:
NSTR
MPI:
NSTR
MBIE:
NSTR
IN-CONFIDENCE
IN-CONFIDENCE
Prepared by: David
IN-CONFIDENCE
UNCLASSIFIED
Heavy rain warnings.
• Westland, south of Otira. From 0900hrs today, until 1800hrs tomorrow.
• Canterbury lake headwaters, south of Arthur’s Pass. From 0900 today, until 1800hrs tomorrow.
Strong wind warnings.
• Wellington and Wairarapa, South of Carterton. From 0900hrs today, until 2000hrs tomorrow.
• Marlborough. From 0900hrs today, until 2100hrs tomorrow.
Heavy rain watches.
• Tasman district, west of Motueka, Buller and Grey Districts. From 0900hrs today, until 1700hrs tomorrow.
• Otago lake headwaters. From 0900hrs today, until 1200hrs tomorrow.
• Fiordland. From 0900hrs today, until 1000hrs tomorrow.
Strong wind watches
• Tararua District and Wairarapa, between Woodville and Carterton. From 0900hrs today, until 2000hrs
tomorrow.
• Westland, south of Harihari and Fiordland, north of Milford Sound. From 0900hrs today, until 1300hrs
tomorrow.
• Queenstown lakes district, Central and North Otago. From 0900hrs today, until 0900hrs tomorrow.
• Southland and Fiordland. From 0100hrs tomorrow morning, until 0800hrs tomorrow.
• Dunedin and Clutha. From 0900hrs today, until 0900hrs tomorrow.
Prepared by the NEMA Monitoring, Alerting and Reporting Centre to provide awareness that supports informed decision making.
Any questions, comments or contributions should be addressed to: [email address].
