Editorial: Thankfully some of us still vote

Last Saturday I stopped outside my nearest Hastings polling station and sat in the car eating an unhealthy lunch.

I tagged behind an elderly chap and shuffled into Hastings' Aubyn Theatre. Voting paper in hand, the old digger made a beeline for the most covert, corner stall.

With shifty eyes he scanned the room, glanced downwards and made his mark. It struck me that while many in this country are happy to wear their political colours on their sleeves, have talkback radio on speed-dial, offer social commentary in public bars and pen letters to editors, when it comes to the physical act of voting - that's our business thank you very much.

Fearing disclosure could be his ruin, he folded his ballot paper three times before slotting it with palpable relief. Anonymity maintained. Cover intact.

Yet such stealth is completely understandable. The Electoral Commission designs these private stations like we're about to engage in something lewd.

And besides, there's a distinctly subversive element to voting. Within the high-walled booths I feel seditious. With a stroke of a pen I can bring governments down. It's quietly, privately, militant.

From a Catholic school background, the ritual reminded me of the act of confession. The battle, as a kid in a dark confessional, was to be honest with yourself.

Polling booths are no different. Do I vote with the heart, or the head? Does one preclude the other?

Two days later news broke of the lowest voter turnout since 1887. It underscored a massive chasm between the elderly voters I saw in Aubyn Theatre making their laboured way to the booths, and the million disaffected Kiwis who didn't bother.

All bar none of the voters I saw were superannuitants. One took the better part of a minute to swing her aged legs out of a car. With hubby's help she grasped a zimmer frame and made her laboured way up the gentle concrete ramp. It was a long, pained, walk. Determined, salmon-like in her upstream mission, she shuffled with tiny steps. The pace so tortoise-like I'd swear if the planet wasn't already rotating she wouldn't have made any headway. Legend.

It seems the election's not quite a race that stops a nation, but one that considerably slows it down.