One of a dozen billboards around Whangārei urging people to vote in this year's local elections. Photo / Susan Botting
About a quarter of Northland’s 133,713 local election voters have already had their say ahead of next week’s October 11 vote deadline.
Latest figures, published on Thursday, showed 32,750 Northlanders had cast their votes.
It breaks down to 15,150 people in Whangārei, 12,250 in the Far North and 5400 in Kaipara.
The voting rate among Kaipara District Council’s 18,327 electors remains in top spot, where it has been all week. Turnout was expected to crack 30% by yesterday.
“I think it’s beautiful news,” Kaipara voter and Tangiteroria Marae kaumatua and kuia flats resident Martha Heaton said.
“Councils have such a big influence on our lifestyle.”
Former Kaipara Deputy Mayor Peter Wethey said voting helped to ensure the right sort of politicians sat around the council table.
Voting was particularly important for Kaipara residents, who had faced Government-appointed commissioners running their council for four years from 2012, he said.
The turnout for Kaipara District Council (KDC) is ahead of that for Far North District Council (FNDC), Northland Regional Council (NRC) and Whangārei District Council (WDC).
All four are fostering an inter-council rivalry to help boost election engagement, but the effort is very much unified.
Their social media teams have joined forces to create tongue-in-cheek memes to help springboard the competition.
Popular memes feature images from the movies Boy and Twilight, as well as the television series Narcos.
These are the overwritten with voter return percentages, to boost awareness and turnout.
Their post to Facebook attracted 28,780 views, 1890 engagements, a reach of 15,590 and an engagement rate of 11.6% per impression in its first 24 hours after being posted. .
WDC digital communications adviser Craig Neilson said memes were a fast, cheap and easy tool.
“Memes are pretty common among the people who talk online, and we are appealing to those people.
“We have to think like dandelions and spread dandelion election seeds into every crack in the footpath.”
He said the memes would be updated next week with the latest voting turnout percentages.
NRC social media and digital marketing adviser Esther Malcolm said the memes were created to reach voters in a different way.
“We wanted to catch people’s attention and decided to give memes a go.”
Whangārei lagging
WDC’s 87,004 electors are currently bottom of the region’s leaderboard, with 22.6% turnout by Thursday.
Retiring WDC politician Patrick Holmes was elected to Whangārei Heads General Ward in 2022 with a 55.2% voter turnout – Northland’s highest.
He said Whangārei’s voters needed to step up and aim for the highest return. “The other councils look to use to take a lead.”
He said Northlanders should also make sure to vote for NRC’s nine politicians across eight constituencies.
“Particularly in this part of the world, with rising sea levels and inundation, that’s NRC’s gig.”
In third place on the leaderboard, NRC’s 133,789 electors achieved a 24.5% voter turnout by late Thursday.
FNDC’s 48,458 electors achieved a 25.2% voter turnout.
Dover Samuels, Kerikeri’s longtime local and central government politician, joined in the spirit of the lighthearted but serious rivalry, saying his district’s voters should try to top the leaderboard, and that everybody should have their say.
“Value our democratic process and show your appreciation of the opportunity for the ordinary ratepayer and resident to have your say, when around the world this basic principle our forebears fought for is diminishing,” Samuels said.
“Get off your backside and vote.
“Don’t waste the opportunity.”
It was crucial that people exercised their democratic right to vote, which was denied to so many around the world, he said.
■ Local Democracy Reporting is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.