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Is the Electoral Commission the most useless Government department going?\\xa0

The counting for three weeks, to be fair, is required by law. But when it\'s done problems have now been found in 15 different places and, unlike the revelation on the first three places, National\'s vote has been materially affected and has now gone up.\\xa0

What else? There was the issues over voting papers being unavailable on the day as well. \\xa0\\xa0

There\'s a growing sense over the past month, remember it is four weeks tomorrow since we voted and to be frank it appears far from being settled, but a growing sense we cocked this up.\\xa0

Recounts, and there are three, aren\'t the fault of the commission. But given the reputation of the commission they better pray the numbers come back the same, or else there will be more questions.\\xa0

But the most egregious bit from yesterday was the revelation that the M\\u0101ori seat in Auckland had a voting booth at the marae where the M\\u0101ori Party candidate is the CEO.\\xa0

So, a candidate and the boss of the place where the polling booth is at. As someone in the Labour party asked -how does that work? Not a bad question.\\xa0

Then we get to the allegation where food was handed out. Food being handed out on a marae is common. But food being handed out at a polling booth raises questions.\\xa0

Not helping the case is the fact the electorate is one of the three involved in a recount. The difference is four votes.\\xa0

Another aspect of it was on the night, election night, the difference was 495 votes to the other side. That\'s quite the swing on specials.\\xa0

When you take all this and look at it in totality you can see why in places like America the more conspiratorially minded can take one and one and come up with 17.\\xa0

I don\\u2019t think we have skullduggery here. But we have a lot of unprofessionalism, we have sloppiness, we have incompetence, and we still don\\u2019t have enough answers.\\xa0

Whether by law, rule or just plain common sense, setting up a polling booth at a place where the candidate and CEO works is beyond belief. Yet here we have it.\\xa0

What happens if the recount numbers are different, given one of the reasons for such a long time to count is to allow those counting to get it right?\\xa0

This is a shabby, unholy mess.\\xa0

We have no Government, we have no final count and rules are about to be timed out around ministers carrying on post the election. They expire tomorrow.\\xa0

Do we look second, or third rate? How confident are you that those in charge have any real clue as to what they are supposed to be doing?\\xa0

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