Poor Chris Carter

As Minister of Local Government and thus responsible for the polling fiascos, he was asked the following questions in the House today:

Heather Roy: Is the Minister not embarrassed that his local body elections using STV have produced such a shambolic result and been outperformed by Afghanistan, which has just had its first election in 5,000 years?

Ouch.

Larry Baldock: Has the Minister considered requesting the services of the United Nations electoral supervisory body once it has completed its task in Afghanistan in order to sort out the electoral botch-up that is affecting numerous local government elections here in New Zealand; if not, what assurances can he give that local government democracy will not be run like the elections in the state of Florida in the future?

Ouch. Ouch.

For what it's worth, Gerry Brownlee did raise an interesting point about whether the Ministry had any contigency plans (which wasn't asked due to the lack of supplementary questions). If there weren't any such plans, Chris now has twenty-four hours to think of a plausible excuse.