Election day rules

Written By: - Date published: 7:45 pm, October 13th, 2023 - Comments Off on Election day rules
Categories: election 2023, elections, The Standard - Tags:

The rules about election day are pretty clear.

This rule applies to websites and social media

Don’t post anything to social media or a website on election day that could influence voters. Also make sure your profile pictures on social media don’t include anything that could influence voters.

You may only keep existing election material up on a website or social media if all the following apply.

  • You don’t update it on election day
  • It’s only available to people who choose to access it
  • The site isn’t advertised
Electoral Commission: Rules once voting starts and on election day

Normally I’d just turn off any ability to leave comments on election day. But I’m at a loose end myself because of scheduling between work and code. So we’ll just put all comments in moderation at midnight requiring a moderator to release them. We’ll release comments on Daily Review and OpenMike provided they don’t violate the rules above. The rest will be trashed until after the polls close.

On election day, Saturday 14 October, all voting places will be open from 9am to 7pm.

Electoral Commission: 2023 General Election Overview

So we’ll turn off comments at Midnight and resume service at 7PM tomorrow.
Needless to say, the usual rules will apply, in particular the one about not wasting the time of moderators. Of course any bans would be silent which will make it more interesting than usual.

Now get out there and vote. Ideally drag a couple of other people out to vote as well.

To me, it looks like this election is going to be pretty tight with a high likelihood of NZ First in the government-maker role. Given the antipathy between possible coalition parties and the kind of chaos that will cause to stable government, that makes it pretty important to make an actual choice with your vote this election.

I’ll be double voting Labour.

Comments are closed.