Heather du Plessis-Allan: This is why postal voting needs to go

Surely that judge throwing out the election result in Auckland has started the clock ticking on postal voting. 

This case may not seem a big deal given that it involves just 79 votes, in just one subdivision, in just one relatively small local board election in Auckland. 

But the 79 may just be the tip of the iceberg. It may be that hundreds of ballot papers in that subdivision were stolen from letterboxes, filled in and sent in as legit votes. 

Now Ken Turner from the Waitakere's is also considering legal options because he reckons something funny happened with 212 votes in his election too. 

None of this is a surprise to me because years ago when friends of mine were flatting, as happens, mail turned up for previous tenants. 

Some of that mail was voting papers. So my friends filled the papers in and sent them all back in as legitimate votes and no one ever got in trouble for it. 

We all know the mail voting system is ripe for being gamed. 

But perhaps in our naivety we hadn’t imagined it would go from a bunch of silly flatties to what seems like may have been an orchestrated rigging of an election. 

Postal voting should go the way of the horse and cart. It's not the only reason so many of us can’t be bothered with council elections, but it is a significant part of it. 

You get the mail, pop it on the counter, forget about it, find it after election day is well past, or find it too hard to remember where to find a post box. 

Not only does it make it harder to vote, it also makes it harder to trust the election outcome. 

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