Election 2023: Electoral Commission reassures rural voters they will have the chance to vote

Rumours that hundreds of polling booths in remote areas of the country will be closed on election day are false, says the Electoral Commission.

It follows NZ First leader Winston Peters saying it was “an outrageous attack on the right to vote” that polling places would close on election day.

“Booths being closed stopping people from having access to vote on October 14 should see the Chief Electoral Officer sacked immediately. Before the Prime Minister goes in eight days time he should explain why he allowed this to happen.”

It is an outrageous attack on the right to vote in our democracy that hundreds of rural voting booths are being closed or restricted on Election Day.

Booths being closed stopping people from having access to vote on October 14 should see the Chief Electoral Officer sacked…

— Winston Peters (@winstonpeters) October 6, 2023

Karl Le Quesne, the Chief Electoral Officer, said on Saturday there will be 2300 places open on election day and any claim otherwise is not true.

In every electorate, there are voting places that are open during advance voting but not open on election day. In total, there are 265 voting places only open during advance voting this election, compared with 230 in 2020 and 305 in 2017.

Across nine rural electorates throughout New Zealand there are 603 places open on election day compared with 664 in 2020, and 629 in 2017.

The reason there were more locations open in 2020 was to combat long queues during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“There are changes to voting place locations in urban and rural regions every election determined by factors including the availability of locations, staffing levels, and local demand,” said Le Quesne.

The leader of the Labour Party Chris Hipkins addressed the concern over polling locations on Saturday in a standup.

Hipkins said the number of booths open this year was not dissimilar to 2017, or earlier elections and noted the discrepancy in 2020 as to do with the pandemic.

He did say he was concerned over the absence of easy vote cards - but stressed that they were not needed to cast a vote, and neither was an ID.

“I think our elections in New Zealand are run very democratically, and separate to politicians.”

Vita Molyneux is a Wellington-based journalist who covers breaking news and stories from the capital. She has been a journalist since 2018 and joined the Herald in 2021.