17 Nov 2010

Cooks scrutineers ensure voting integrity

4:08 pm on 17 November 2010

Scrutineers with local knowledge will be relied on to avert any attempt of electoral fraud during the Cook Island elections tomorrow.

The Electoral Officer, Taggy Tangimetua, says the electoral roll is not 100 per cent perfect and there are issues with listings of people who have died or possibly moved overseas.

She says the movement of people generally causes issues:

"The Cook Islands people are very mobile and within a three months period, people would have moved from constituency to another and then there are issues of those that have two homes."

Taggy Tangimetua says the scrutineers generally know who everyone is, so to try to vote under the name of someone who has died would be difficult.

Voting in more than one place would be picked up during the final count.