Your Vote 2022: Use our interactive to help you decide

As local body election voting opens today the New Zealand Herald is launching an interactive with information about council candidates across the country to help you decide.

Overall there are 3409 candidates in 583 elections in regional councils, territorial and unitary authorities.

To make things easier, click through to our interactive and begin by searching the election you are interested in.

You can then click on individual candidates to learn why they're standing, what their priorities are, and more about them.

USE THE INTERACTIVE BELOW:

The information is as it was provided to Policy.nz.

You can then click through to find out more about what their policies are on issues like climate change, housing, rates, the economy, and transport.

There are 65 mayoral races in New Zealand, of which seven have just one candidate running, meaning they will romp straight in.

The mayoral race with the most candidates is Auckland, where there are 23 people vying for the city's top job.

As for the other elections, there are 69 regional council elections, 234 territorial authority elections, 29 unitary authority elections, and 185 community and local board elections.

Of these, there are 92 races going unchallenged, meaning all these candidates will win.

In fact, overall, almost a fifth of elections across the country are unchallenged.

The majority of elections, 485, will be run under the First Past the Post system where the candidate with the most votes wins.

But 98 will be done under another system called Single Transferable Voting where voters are able to rank candidates in order of preference, rather than simply pick their most preferred candidate for each vacancy.

If you are enrolled, your local council will send you voting papers in the mail now that it's time to vote.

People should make sure they post their papers well before October 8, to make sure their vote counts.

You can also drop papers back at ballot boxes or voting hubs in your town or city.

If you haven't enrolled to vote, don't worry, you cast a special vote.

Have a look on your council's website to see where you can cast this type of vote- it takes less than five minutes and you can usually vote on site or take it away to vote later.

Elections results will start rolling in on the afternoon of October 8.

For more local election news, listen to On the Tiles – Local Edition with Georgina Campbell