For most people, election day is simply two ticks on a piece of paper but for at least three people the day will be a culmination of nearly one year's work.

Returning officers Ross Shadbolt, Mabel Wharekawa-Burt and Ken Harland take care of the Bay of Plenty, Coromandel and Waiariki, and Tauranga electorates respectively.
They are responsible for making sure votes are cast, counted, collected and collated into one final result for an area that spreads from the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula to the southern shores of Lake Taupo.
The central hub for this operation will be McLean House in central Tauranga, the combined election headquarters for each region.
There will be at least nine telephones operating at election headquarters which will receive voting results from close to 300 polling booths from the four electorates.
Those results will be given to data entry operators who send the numbers down to the national election headquarters in Wellington, where the results are updated on the website www.elections.org.nz.
'For me, it's a challenge and I enjoy that challenge. I want to make sure the opportunity is there for everyone to vote but getting the final result out to people is really important,” says Ross.
Mabel has been working in the elections process since 1999 and says it is such a big event.
'I became involved in elections because I wanted to encourage more Maori to vote and participate in the whole election process,” says Mabel.
Ken says returning officers are responsible for managing the whole system and making sure accurate results are being fed down to Wellington.
The trio say it is important for those who cannot vote in their electorate on election day or cannot vote on the day at all, to cast an advance vote, which can be made at specific locations in their region prior to election day from October 22.