Post Syndicated from Bruce Schneier original https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/11/new-zealand-election-fraud.html
It seems that this election season has not gone without fraud. In New Zealand, a vote for “Bird of the Year” has been marred by fraudulent votes:
More than 1,500 fraudulent votes were cast in the early hours of Monday in the country’s annual bird election, briefly pushing the Little-Spotted Kiwi to the top of the leaderboard, organizers and environmental organization Forest & Bird announced Tuesday.
Those votes — which were discovered by the election’s official scrutineers — have since been removed. According to election spokesperson Laura Keown, the votes were cast using fake email addresses that were all traced back to the same IP address in Auckland, New Zealand’s most populous city.
It feels like writing this story was a welcome distraction from writing about the US election:
“No one has to worry about the integrity of our bird election,” she told Radio New Zealand, adding that every vote would be counted.
Asked whether Russia had been involved, she denied any “overseas interference” in the vote.
I’m sure that’s a relief to everyone involved.