Alternative flag for New Zealand announced following referendum

A new referendum result on Tuesday has pitched a black, white and blue fern design as a possible choice for New Zealand’s new flag after the late votes were counted in. A second round of referendum in March will see tough competition between the winner and the current flag.

The Silver Fern design in black, white and blue has won the majority of votes by 1.16 percent over a Silver Fern red, white and blue design. Both the designs have been created by Melbourne-based Kyle Lockwood. The final winner had also appeared on the list of preliminary results announced on Friday before the late votes were counted in.

“The dominant feature of this flag is a white fern frond that sweeps up diagonally from the bottom left corner to the right of the top centre. The left side of the fern is sitting on a black background. To the right of the fern, there are four stars in the formation of the Southern Cross constellation, sitting on a blue background. Each star is red with a white border, and has five points,” reads the official description of the flag design.

According to New Zealand’s election commission, the voters’ turnout was 49 percent and about 1.5 million votes were cast. The Red Peak finished at the third position with 122,152 first preference votes. Four designs were shortlisted by the Flag Consideration Panel in September but the Red Peak, which then occupied the fifth position, got hyped over social media and got included in the ballot after an online campaign in its favour.

Rowan Simpson, who led the campaign behind the Red Peak, said, “It would have been great to see Red Peak be the contender, but I’m still proud that we managed to get New Zealanders a real choice in this first vote.” He was quoted by the Guardian as saying, “It’s been inspiring to see a national conversation about identity and how we represent ourselves to each other and on the world stage.”

According to professor John Burrowes, the chairman of the government panel overseeing the flag referendum process, the results are too close at the moment to make a call between the two designs.

The winner received less first preference votes than the runner-up but won by a higher share of the total votes it received.

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