There’s no good reason to remove election-day enrolment, which has been in place since 2020. And there’s certainly no reason to remove the ability to enrol during the advance voting period. You’ve been able to enrol up to the day before election day since 1993.
The idea that election-day enrolment was delaying the official results is also nonsense. Whether people update their enrolment details two weeks before the election or on election day, that form still has to be processed and their information updated. It’s the same amount of workers’ time, either way. The Government can just hire more people to do it after election day, rather than before, and the job will get done on time.
Don’t give me the “well, they should sort out their enrolment details earlier” line. I thought National and Act were against bureaucracy? And now they’re saying you should lose your right to vote unless you know about the bureaucracy of voter enrolment and tick the state’s forms well ahead of time?
We should be making it as easy as possible for people to exercise their right to vote. Aotearoa New Zealand has a good record in that regard. We were world leaders in votes for Māori, votes for women, removing the property-ownership test. We don’t have people queuing for hours like in the United States.
But now the Government wants to use bureaucracy to trip people up and stop them voting. Even Judith Collins has said it is wrong: “The proposal for a 13-day registration deadline appears to constitute an unjustified limit on s12 of the NZBORA [the right to vote]. The accepted starting point is the fundamental importance of the right to vote within a liberal democracy. A compelling justification is required to limit that right.”
The Deputy Prime Minister says you’re a “dropkick” if you don’t get your registration sorted well before the election. But why shouldn’t a person be able to come along on election day or in the early voting period, cast their vote, and, if their enrolment details need updating, do it at the same time? Why force us to use an inefficient, two-step process?
Since when has the supposedly libertarian Act Party loved bureaucracy?
Truth is, we know why the Government is doing this. It’s a Government that’s failing to deliver and fading in the polls. In most recent polls, Labour has been ahead of National. Forty-eight per cent of voters say it’s time for a new Government. Only 38% want to give this Government a second chance.
So they’re trying to screw the scrum in their favour.
David Seymour let it slip with his “dropkicks” comment. Act MP Todd Stephenson put it even more bluntly: “It’s outrageous that someone completely disengaged and lazy can rock up to the voting booth, get registered there and then, and then vote to tax other people’s money away.”
Trying to make sure only the “right” people are voting is dangerous, anti-democratic thinking.
We all know this change is about setting up barriers for people who are young, Māori, disengaged or alienated from the structures of power and wealth in this country – because those people are unlikely to vote for a Government that works in the interests of the wealthy and powerful.
The Government knows full well that these New Zealanders, who have the same right to vote as anyone else, are less likely to be familiar with the rules around registration.
The Government also knows there will be many people, Kiwis not as politically engaged as you and me, dear reader, but no less worthy of the vote, who will turn up to a polling place on election day or during the advance voting period thinking that they can update their registration at the same time as they vote – because that’s how it has been and they haven’t heard about the change – and be turned away under this new law.
Democracy is meant to be a contest of ideas. And it is fundamental to democracy that the voters choose the Government, not the other way around.
If the Government wants to be re-elected, it should give people a reason to vote for it, not try to exclude voters it doesn’t like.
