2023-11-14 07:39:05
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Vote verifiers in New Zealand have been so overwhelmed by foreign intervention that they have had to delay announcing the winner.
The election seeks the country’s favorite bird and the intervention was that of comedian John Oliver.
The contest, often called Bird of the Year, is an annual event organized by the group Forest and Bird to raise awareness regarding the situation of the country’s native birds, some of which are in danger of extinction. This year, the Bird of the Century is chosen to commemorate the group’s centenary.
Oliver took advantage of a loophole in the regulations, which allows anyone with a valid email address to vote, and launched a humorous campaign in favor of his favorite bird, the pūteketeke — a waterfowl of which fewer than 1,000 remain — in his show “Last Week Tonight” on the HBO network.
They installed a billboard promoting “The Lord of the Wings” in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington, as well as placing posters in Paris, Tokyo, London and Mumbai, India. They had a plane with a banner fly over Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro, and Oliver appeared dressed as the bird on Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show.”
“At the end of the day, democracy is this: America interfering in foreign elections,” Oliver said on his show.
Forest and Bird noted that verifiers had been forced to take two extra days to verify the hundreds of thousands of votes that arrived before the deadline on Sunday. The name of the winner is scheduled to be announced on Wednesday.
“This has been crazy, in the best of ways,” the environmental group’s chief executive, Nicola Toki, told The Associated Press.
New Zealand is an unusual case since, before the arrival of humans, birds were the dominant animals.
“If you think regarding New Zealand’s wildlife, we don’t have lions, tigers or bears,” Toki said. Although regarding nine out of ten New Zealanders now live in towns or cities, he added, many maintain a deep love for nature. nature.
“We have an intangible and extraordinarily powerful connection with our fauna and our birds,” he added.
The contest has survived controversies in the past. In 2020, verifiers discovered around 1,500 fraudulent votes in favor of the kiwi, the national bird. And two years ago, the winner was a bat, which was able to enter the contest because the indigenous Maori consider it part of the bird family.
The year the contest began, in 2005, a total of 865 votes were received, something the organization considered a success, according to Toki. They broke their record by reaching 56,000 votes in 2021, a figure that this year they surpassed a few hours following Oliver launched his campaign.
Toki said Oliver contacted the group earlier in the year to ask if they might sponsor one of the birds. They said yes, without being aware of what was to come.
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