The Election Commission (EC) has announced that all 1,542 ballot cards from New Zealand fall into the category of "cannot be counted" after they failed to reach the constituencies where the vote counts took place in time.
EC chairman Ittiporn Boonpracong said the EC resolution states it cannot count the votes now as the deadline has passed.
However, the EC has ordered a panel to investigate what happened and report back within one week, he said.
"Those ballot cards cannot be counted because the committee has completed counting the votes at a central polling venue outside of the constituencies, which is where the votes from foreign countries had to be tallied, and the results have already been announced," the EC said in a press release.
According to Section 114 of the MP Elections Act, late ballots can be regarded as invalid.
Mr Ittiporn claimed the ballots were "not invalid", for technical reasons, meaning that section of the law was not relevant in this case.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement yesterday that certain agencies, the EC, the MFA and Thailand Post Co, the courier, agreed earlier that the last fleet to deliver the ballots from overseas must leave Thailand Post by 8pm on March 23.
But those due to be sent from Wellington to Auckland via Air New Zealand on March 19 arrived in Auckland on March 21. A "special diplomatic parcel bag" was sent to Thailand on March 23 via Thai Airways International and was scheduled to arrive in Bangkok at 8.50pm the same day, it said.
The MFA then contacted the EC and Thailand Post and was told the ballots in the bag would not be delivered to be counted at the 350 constituencies nationwide in time.
The MFA officials then decided to keep the bag in THAI's cargo as officials from the three agencies agreed they would be safe there.
On March 24, the MFA retrieved the bag. It handed it to the EC on March 25, it said.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Don Pramudwinai said a committee has been appointed to conduct a probe and the result should come out within 30 days.
Sopittha Yacharat, a 26-year-old Thai student at the University of Wellington, said she registered and went to vote at the Royal Thai Embassy on March 9. Everything seemed fine, she said.
"I'm very surprised and disappointed that it turned out [this way]," she said. "This shouldn't have happened. The voices of Thai citizens here should have arrived in Thailand and been part of the elections."
"I think someone must be responsible and explain why this happened, and how to fix it in the future. Will there be similar cases? If they still do nothing or ignore this, people might not want to go and vote anymore," she said.
Thais in Auckland are discussing what to do as they are very unhappy with what happened, a source said.
