Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith. Photo / NZME
The Government was warned New Zealand’s generous election enrolment laws would lead to long and uncertain vote counts by the 2030s unless changes were made — but ministers were also warned the changes they were considering would hit young people, Māori, Pacific and Asian electors hardest.
Those negative effects may be partly mitigated by a move to allow the Electoral Commission to automatically update people’s details using other data.
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced a suite of changes to electoral laws on Thursday. One of the biggest changes is to close enrolment 13 days before election day — one day before advance voting begins.
That means people will no longer be able to enrol and cast their vote on the same day, as has been the case since 2020.
Same-day enrolments are counted as special votes, which take about 10 times longer to count than ordinary votes. As a result of this, the Electoral Commission now takes a week longer to publish final election results, including the special vote count.
Goldsmith, along with the rest of the coalition, expressed frustration at the length of the count at the last election, and asked officials to look at changes.
“If we leave things as they are, it could well take even longer in future elections. The 20-day timeframe for a final result will likely already be challenging to achieve at the next election without changes,” Goldsmith said.
Labour and the Greens criticised the changes, with Labour’s justice spokesman Duncan Webb saying they were an “appalling change that will make it harder for a lot of people to exercise their democratic right”.
A Regulatory Impact Statement from the Ministry of Justice said there had been an explosion in special votes as more and more people enrolled or updated their details on the day they voted. There were about 300,000 to 350,000 of these votes at the last election.
In the 2023 election, 602,000 votes cast were special votes, or about 20.9% of all votes. If nothing were to change, the Electoral Commission forecasts this to rise to 739,000 special votes in the 2026 election, or 24% of the total.
By the 2032 election, the Electoral Commission forecasts 999,000 special votes, or 30% of the total.
Officials noted a general trend towards people getting their enrolment sorted far later in the cycle, with 66% of enrolment “transactions” in the 2023 election occurring after writ day, the Governor-General’s official instruction to hold an election. This compared to 52% in 2017 and 42% in 2020.
The change may go deeper than mere laziness. Officials said that New Zealanders move around a lot more than in the past. At the last census, about a fifth of people had lived in their house for a year or less and 53% of people had lived in their house for less than five years.
Moving house more means updating your enrolment details more. If people do this on the day, it means more special votes and a longer count.
Officials shared Goldsmith’s concern about ballooning numbers of special votes leading to a longer counting period. If a third of votes were special votes, the count could take longer than it does now — although they did not estimate a time.
They warned that a longer vote count and more special votes could delay the start of coalition negotiations prolonging uncertainty and affecting everything from the functioning of charities to investment in the economy.
“Special votes often affect the final number of seats allocated to parties. For that reason, government formation negotiations may be constrained until special votes have been counted,” officials said.
“The level of uncertainty about election outcomes will always depend on how close the results are for each election.
“Likewise, the degree to which parties may be able to progress government formation negotiations while awaiting the official results will depend on the closeness of the results as well as other political considerations,” officials said.
“[E]lections are by nature a time of uncertainty in democracies, and there is value in a timely and smooth transfer of power following an election. A change of government and associated changes in policies can have broad impacts — for example, on the general public, Māori, businesses, the voluntary sector, public services and more.
“Some international studies have indicated that political uncertainty around national elections can have an impact on economic factors, such as reduced investment and spending,” officials said.
These challenges are particularly acute for New Zealand, which because of the coalition negotiations period that is almost guaranteed by an MMP election, will always have a period of post-election uncertainty. New Zealand also has relatively short three-year terms, meaning elections come around frequently.
Campaigns take about six weeks from the last day of Parliament to election day.
If the vote count takes three weeks and coalition negotiations take another five, then New Zealand will spend about one month in every 20 either in the midst of an election campaign or waiting for a government to be formed — the period of uncertainty is even longer considering how little governments tend to do between delivering their final budget and getting out on the hustings.
Officials also warned the pressures of these enormous special vote counts could lead to errors, undermining confidence in the electoral system. A move to different counting methods might be desirable. The current model is “largely manual”, officials said.
“This model may be nearing the end of its capacity to cope with increasing volume and processing requirements,” they said.
Officials warned the changes could have serious consequences on turnout. The Electoral Commission advised that special votes are more likely to come from areas with high Māori, Asian, and Pacific communities.
Younger people are also far more likely to cast special votes — particularly first-time voters. In 2023, 33% of 18- to 19-year-old voters enrolled or updated their details during the voting period, including 48% of Māori voters aged 18 to 19.
In 2023, 17.3% of Māori voters updated their details or enrolled during the voting period. The same figure for the general population is 18.9%.
Officials raised some concerns about whether the changes might raise Treaty of Waitangi problems, as the Treaty “provides for equal citizenship rights for Māori”.
“These rights include the right to political representation. Setting an earlier enrolment deadline will increase the administrative requirements to exercise this right,” they said.
Officials were also concerned that based on “previous trends” there may be an “increased likelihood” that votes cast by Māori would be disallowed at a higher rate than those cast by non-Māori, depending on how people responded to the new deadline for updating their details.
As part of Goldsmith’s changes, the Government will introduce automatic enrolment updates, making it more likely for people to have their enrolments kept current automatically. Officials recommended this option on its own as their preferred method to reduce vote counting timeframes.
Instead, it was paired with decisions to close enrolment 13 days before election day.
Officials also considered closing enrolment on writ day and requiring people to vote in their electorate, rather than casting a vote from somewhere else.