150 years of voting in New Zealand

By NEILL ATKINSON*

Many New Zealanders will remember July 14 as the date of the dramatic snap-election of 1984. But few people are probably aware that today is also the 150th anniversary of a far more significant milestone in our political history - the beginning of New Zealand's first general election.

In the winter of 1853, 13 years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealanders went to the polls for the first time to elect the 37 members of the colony's first Parliament.

The experience of voting in the 1850s was very different from today. For a start, there was no single election day.

Elections were organised locally, and each returning officer was usually responsible for several different electorates. Therefore, voting in the 24 electorates (some of which returned two or three members) was staggered over months.

The first member of New Zealand's House of Representatives, Hugh Carleton, was elected on July 14 at Russell in the Bay of Islands electorate.

Most of his colleagues were selected in August, City of Auckland and City of Wellington elections being held on the 11th and 15th respectively.

The last seat, Dunedin Country, was decided on October 1.

A further eight months passed before the Parliament met, in May 1854 in Auckland, the capital until 1865.

In keeping with British political tradition, the right to vote, or franchise, was restricted to men aged 21 or over who possessed freehold or leasehold property or occupied a dwelling of a certain value.

Aliens (those who were not British subjects) and prison inmates were excluded.

Men who owned or leased property in several electorates were allowed to enrol and vote in each of them.

Maori men were theoretically allowed to participate, but in reality most were excluded by the property requirement because they possessed their lands communally.

In 1853, about 100 Maori were enrolled, from a total electorate of 5849.

By the standards of the time, and especially compared with Britain, New Zealand's franchise was generous. Although in 1853 only about half of the adult European males in the colony were enrolled, probably about three-quarters were eligible.

In the old English style, nominations took place on the hustings, a temporary stage erected in some public place.

If there were more candidates than seats, those present would vote by a show of hands, but a defeated candidate could then demand a poll, which would be held several days later.

Voting was held on working days and the booths opened only from 9am to 4pm.

Initially, electors filled in hand-written voting papers, but from 1858 they were required to state who they wanted to vote for out loud to the polling official.

There was little or no secrecy. In 1860, for example, an Auckland newspaper published a list showing how each elector had voted.

Election-day behaviour varied enormously throughout the country, depending on the character of the electorate, the personalities involved and the efforts of political factions. In many seats, especially isolated rural districts, the elections aroused little interest.

One politician recalled how he was elected without opposition and without being present at the election.

"I made no speeches and no promises. Elections in those days were not considered of much consequence.

"Settlers had so much to occupy them in attending to their own affairs and were so widely scattered about, that but a few electors, and then only those in the immediate vicinity of the place of nomination, cared to attend."

Finding candidates was also sometimes difficult: 20 of the 37 members of the first Parliament were elected unopposed.

Few settlers could afford the expense of parliamentary membership or the time away from home or business affairs.

Then there was the travel. Canterbury politician Henry Sewell described his long, storm-tossed sea voyage from Lyttelton to Auckland as a terrible undertaking, worse even than sailing from England to America.

On the other hand, some early elections, especially in Auckland, were colourful, chaotic and fiercely contested events. Candidates and their supporters hired musicians, organised parades, flew banners and hosted lavish banquets.

Candidates' committee rooms, and even polling booths, were often located in taverns. There were many allegations of treating (where candidates laid on free drink and food to entice electors to vote for them), bribery, intimidation and impersonation of voters.

In Auckland in 1855 one candidate's committee room was described as nothing better than a common drinking booth - a regular tippling-shop, where half-intoxicated men were seen either reeling out of their own accord, or being dragged to record their votes at the poll. Another was said to have rolled a hogshead of rum into the street with his own hands, and invited the electors to fall in.

Alarmed by reports of electoral abuses in Auckland, in 1858 the New Zealand Parliament passed a series of laws to reform the electoral system. The enrolment process was tightened, bands and banners were outlawed, and corrupt practices were defined and prohibited.

By the early 1860s election days had generally become respectable affairs.

Election night, however, was a different story: after the polls closed large, boisterous crowds would gather to hear the returning officer announce the local results and the candidates thank their supporters. Groups of young men would often throw eggs, rotten fruit, flour-bombs or firecrackers, and drunken scuffles were common.

Over the following decades Parliament would pass a string of far-reaching electoral reforms, including the establishment of the Maori seats (1867), the introduction of the secret ballot (1870), universal male suffrage (1879), a single election day throughout the country (1881), an independent Representation Commission to redraw electoral boundaries after each census (1887), and the abolition of plural voting (1889). Most famously, in 1893 New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant the vote to women.

Forty years on from that first election, having extended the right to vote to virtually every adult in the country, New Zealand was arguably the most democratic nation in the world.

Then and now

1853

5849 voters

Including about 100 Maori

2003

2.6 million voters

Including 196,148 on Maori roll

* Neill Atkinson, of the History Group of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, is the author of Adventures in Democracy: A History of the Vote in New Zealand, which will be published next month by the University of Otago Press in association with the Electoral Commission.

A special exhibition will also be mounted on the Elections New Zealand website featuring historic film clips, sound files and student activities.