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(Open Letter to Former US President Trump)
Dear Mr. Trump,
Merry Christmas!
Prior to opening time, on the first day of Advance Voting (2 October
2023), I was at the head of the queue to vote at the polling station
in The Palms shopping mall, in Christchurch, New Zealand.
When the polling station opened, I was met by an electoral official
who was wearing a badge stating that he spoke English and Filipino.
He told me which table to go to to be given my ballot-paper.
On at least two occasions, he and (I think) one other male called
out "Special Vote," which was totally inappropriate.
One of those occasions involved addressing directly the White woman
who was to give me my ballot-paper.
A Special Vote is what a person casts, if they are voting at a location
outside their own electorate. That was inappropriate in my case,
since I was voting in my own electorate of Christchurch East.
The woman put on a show of being incompetent -- folding my ballot-paper
vertically, like a book, instead of from the bottom up, so as to cover
up the bottom part, where voters' ticks would select candidates and
parties. She was then told by a nearby male how to fold the paper
correctly.
This was totally unbelievable. Electoral officials would obviously
have been trained, and -- anyway -- their job was not at all complicated
or hard to master. Then she handed me my ballot-paper and I went
to a booth and voted.
However, when I had voted and tried to fold
my ballot-paper, I found that there was an extra ballot-paper underneath!
Electoral officials don't need to be taught not to give people two ballot-papers.
That is just common sense, and has nothing to do with whether the woman
was incompetent or not.
I put the extra ballot-paper on a nearby vacant table and called out
to the electoral official that she had given me two ballot-papers.
Some people waiting in the queue to vote were (rightly) appalled about
this! I then put my completed ballot-paper in the box labelled "Christchurch
East" -- ignoring the box labelled "Special Votes".
I am a high-profile person and I have no doubt that these electoral
officials were corruptly trying to discredit me by encouraging me to
(illegally) vote twice -- so that they could discover this and prosecute
me.
My suggestion to you is that electoral officials tend to be left-wing,
rather than right-wing, and some of them (in all countries) are prepared
to manipulate the system, if they can find a way of doing so.
As I said above, I have no idea whether you are correct in claiming
that the
2020 US Presidential election results were not legitimate , but
what happened to me shows that some officials might certainly try to
game the system.
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