Missing Ōpōtiki Māori Ward candidate profiles

If you have received your local election voting papers in the mail already, you will have noticed a pretty significant error - the candidate profile statements for our Ōpōtiki Māori Ward candidates have not been included.

Just to be clear our Ōpōtiki Māori Ward candidates are all listed on the voting papers. Where the error occurred and where they have been left out is in the Candidate Profiles booklet only. If you know who you want to vote for without needing to read the candidate booklet, you can still tick the boxes and vote as you normally would.

Election services – the external organisation that facilitates local elections for us here in the Ōpōtiki District and who is responsible for the candidate profile statements are working on correcting this significant error and have a plan in place:

• Election Services are reprinting the Ōpōtiki Māori Ward candidate profiles and will send these to the 1,958 affected electors, which will be accompanied by a letter of apology from the Electoral Officer.
• They will be issuing a media release from the Electoral Officer – which we will share.
• Election Services will also contact our three affected candidates to reassure them that a plan is in place, being actioned and to issue an apology.

This isn't the start we wanted for our valued Māori wards, however all steps are being taken to get us back on track.

In the meantime you can check out all of the candidate profiles here on our website and soon to come our candidate videos. Hard copies of the missing candidate profiles are also available from council's main office.