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Thursday, May 9, 2024

Ele Ludemann: Voting too easy


Voting in New Zealand is easy – maybe too easy.

If you’re 18, a citizen who lives here, or has been in the country in the last three years, or a permanent resident and have lived here continuously for 12 months or more.

If you meet that criteria you can enrol to vote even if you’re on remand, home detention, serving a community-based sentence, or serving a sentence of imprisonment of less than 3 years in a New Zealand prison.

It’s not compulsory to enrol to vote but you must be enrolled to vote.

In most countries people have to enrol before polling day. In 2020 and last year people were able to enrol on election day and the Auditor General found that caused problems.

The right to vote is a fundamental plank of democracy. It’s a right that is often taking lightly and the ability to enrol on election day contributes to that.

That could change:

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says very few countries allow voters to enrol on election day, and New Zealand should consider changing the rules.

A report by the auditor-general released on Tuesday found an unprecedented number of special votes were cast in last year’s general election, leading to rushed final checks and mistakes. . .

Paul Goldsmith, the current justice minister, was keeping an open mind.

“There’s some basic, basic stuff that the auditor-general pointed out, so we’re obviously concerned about that, and I will be making my expectations absolutely clear to the Electoral Commission around performance. So that’s absolutely the case,” he told Morning Report.

“The broader question though is whether the design of the system, particularly with the same-day enrolments – enrolments on election day, which is … a new idea – is adding much more pressure to the system.

“And remember that they used to be out of count everything in two weeks. This time, they were in a mad rush to count it in three weeks. We were waiting and waiting and waiting and still mistakes were made. And so that’s the issue.”

Goldsmith said it already cost $227 million to run an election.

“Rather than, you know, just throw even more hundreds of millions at the problem, wouldn’t it be more sensible to ask, have we overcomplicated? Have we made it too, too complicated? Can we simplify it in some way?” . .

It’s not hard to enrol – it can be done online or phoning to have an enrolment form posted to you ; or at polling booths once advance voting starts.

Requiring people to enrol before voting day would simplify the election process. More than 100,000 people enrolled to vote on the day last year which necessitated them making special votes.

If enrolments closed sooner it would reduce the number of special votes by 10s of thousands.

That would speed up the vote count and also improve the integrity of the voting system.

It might also make people realise that the right to vote comes with the responsibility to put at least a little thought into doing so.

Making voting too hard would undermine democracy, but enabling it to be too easy with the ability to enrol on election day makes it too easy.

Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.

2 comments:

CXH said...

And citizens only. There is no reason anyone but a citizen can vote.

There should also be tighter rules on those living overseas, a quick visit in the previous three years doesn't cut it.

Basil Walker said...

Advance voting over the last two general elections made 3 million votes technically outside of the law or illegal because the NZ Electoral Commission WAS OPERATING VOTING OUTSIDE OF THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION LAW.
The NZ voting law states unequivacably that all political hoardings , advertising , messages , polls have to cease or be removed from view on midnight before polling day.
3 MILLION PEOPLE USED THEIR VOTING DAY TO VOTE IN ADVANCE , therefore voting while all political messages, hoardings , radio and TV news items were regularly delivered beside and within 10 metres of the polling booth.
THE VOTES FROM THE ADVANCE POLLING BOOTHS WERE THEN COLLECTED AND PUT SOMEWHERE "SAFE". YEAH RIGHT .