KEY POINTS:
What next? E-campaigning from your cellphone? In the mid-1980s, voter turnout for local elections dropped so low - in 1983, only 30.4 per cent of Auckland City electors voted - that postal voting and the ward system were introduced to try to keep local democracy alive.
The impact
was immediate. In 1986, voter turnout in Auckland City doubled. Similar patterns occurred elsewhere. But the novelty of voting on our kitchen tables quickly wore off and there was a steady drift back to non-voting.
In 1989, only 44 per cent of Auckland City electors voted. Last election the turn-out was slightly better at 48.4 per cent. And that was better than most. Across New Zealand, the average turnout for city council elections was 43 per cent. Manukau and Waitakere City were both among the worst, on 35 per cent.
Progress reports from the current voting suggest than when polls close in a week, the majority for not bothering to vote will have grown yet again.
A colleague suggests the way to seduce Aucklanders back to democracy is to add a lucky number to each ballot paper, with desirable prizes for the winners.
A three-year rates holiday, perhaps. And season tickets to Eden Park and Aotea Centre concerts. Alternatively, we could borrow from Australian states such as New South Wales and Queensland and impose compulsory voting in local elections. Across the Tasman this ensures 85 to 95 per cent participation.
Another option would be to lie back, wipe our hands of the no-hopers who don't vote, and accept that non-voting is an integral part of the democratic system.
Unfortunately, that does rather skew the system against the non-participating groups, including a disproportionate number of the young and, to use a rather old-fashioned expression, the workers.
Recognising this, the Labour Party machine recently wheeled out its letter-box brigade in a last-minute bid to prop up Mayor Dick Hubbard's sagging re-election bid in Auckland City.
Whether this will persuade Labourites to drag themselves to their envelopes, open them and cast a vote, is yet to be seen. But last month's Herald-Digipoll surveys certainly highlight that non-voting is highest among the "workers".
In Auckland City, 46.7 per cent of intending "non-voters" identified with Labour, a further 13 per cent with Greens. In Manukau, non-voters were 66.7 per cent Labour, 8.3 per cent Green. On North Shore they were 50 per cent Labour, 12.5 per cent Green and 12.5 per cent NZ First. Only in Waitakere City did Nationalites head the non-voter poll with 50 per cent, to Labour's 37.5 per cent.
It's not hard to work out that non-voting harms the lazy Labourites, favouring the conservative candidates whose supporters are more likely to vote than those on the poorer side of town.
On the matter of training, research in the United States indicates that getting young people to vote as soon as they are eligible creates a habit within them that will keep them voting for the rest of their lives.
A September 6 report analysing the results of the "New Voters Project", a college campus voter registration campaign covering campuses in 22 states, suggests that text messaging may be the latest tool to boost youth voter turnout.
Short neutral text reminders increased the likelihood of the receiver voting in 2006 by 4.2 per cent. Interestingly, texting was considered much less intrusive than email messaging, with 59 per cent of recipients reporting they actually found the unsolicited reminder helpful.
With a quarter of young Americans using a mobile as their only phone, the researchers see it as a vital new tool in engaging young voters, and not only in the US.
"In the 2004 general election in Spain, for example, a viral text messaging campaign is thought to have mobilised young and urban voters in a way that may have contributed to an unexpected victory by the Spanish Social Labour Party," say Allison Dale, University of Michigan, and Aaron Strauss, Princeton University. "In Korea and China, peer-to-peer text messaging is used to organise flash mobs and large protest rallies on short notice."
As of now, the only flash mobs young Aucklanders have organised through text-messaging are of gate-crashers to parties of the non-political variety. But with a week to go before polls close, anything is still possible.
