Video encourages youth to enrol and vote

Northland Electoral Commission youth advocates Anahera Pickering and Izaia Tilialo have helped produce a video - in the background - to get young people to enrol in the upcoming election.

Young people - those aged 18-24 - have the lowest voter enrolment rate in the country so Northland Electoral Commission youth advocates have made a video to help increase those numbers.

The general election is on September 23 but young voters are slow to enrol to vote, with only 69.4 per cent of those aged 18-24 and 81.39 per cent of those aged 25-29 enrolled in the Whangarei electorate. The figures are even lower for the Northland electorate at 61 per cent in the 18 -24 age group and 75 per cent in the 25-29 age group.

Electoral Commission youth advocates Anahera Pickering, 18, and Izaia Tilialo, 18, from Whangarei along with Joe Wells, 18, and Tangaroa Kapa, 19, from Kaitaia, decided to do something to improve the rates so made a video to be shown to youth across the region.

Izaia said their job was to get more young people enrolled to vote and they decided a video would be a good way to get more youth to engage. The video was made by youth for youth and explained why it was important to youth to enrol and vote.

"They may not realise the importance of voting and our job is to educate them about how important it is," Izaia said.

Anahera said young people couldn't vote if they were not enrolled first.

"[Voting] effects everything we want to do, our recreation, social issues, education, employment," she said.

Anahera said the introduction of online voting may get more young people engaged. Online voting is being considered by the Government, but will not be introduced for this election.

The video, which was produced by Channel North, and accompanying song will be shown to youth around Northland, including schools, youth workshops and gatherings.

Northland Registrar of Electors Melody Hicks said it was necessary that youth knew the importance of their voting and a good way of doing that was to get other youth to give them the message.

She said the video was a great idea, with Izaia playing the guitar and contributing to the song while Joe and Tony also did some rapping.