What will National do about special voting rights?

Written By: - Date published: 10:55 am, November 11th, 2023 - 45 comments
Categories: Christopher Luxon, david seymour, election 2023, elections, national, nz first, same old national, uncategorized, winston peters - Tags:

One of the most democratic changes that Labour made to the electoral system was to allow people to enroll and vote on election day.

The right hate it.  All those young and/or people who are slightly disorganised because of life’s issues get to have their choice for Government recorded, as should happen in a properly functioning democracy.

These votes clearly swing left.  In 2011 after the counting of special votes the Greens gained a seat from National.  In 2014 the same thing happened.  In 2017 Labour and the Greens picked up one seat each at National’s expense.  And in 2020 Labour and Te Maori Pati picked up one seat each at National’s expense.

And in 2023 National again lost two seats, the Greens picked up one and Te Maori Pati picked up two and increased the overhang in Parliament.

The effects special votes had on the final result for the recent election are recorded in this Marc Daalder Newsroom article.  In it he said:

National, Act and New Zealand First all fared worse in the special votes than on election night. National dropped from 40 percent on preliminary to 34.7 percent in the specials, Act fell from 9 percent to 7.4 percent and NZ First fell from 6.5 percent to 4.7 percent.

The specials made up 21 percent of the overall vote, compared with 17 percent in the past two elections.

That means National dropped 0.9 percent in the final results from its election night tally, Labour stayed the same, the Greens gained 0.8 percent, Act and NZ First each dropped 0.4 percent and Te Pāti Māori gained 0.5 percent.

National must be really frustrated by this.  It appears the bigger the turn out and the more people vote that their chances worsen.

So what are they going to do?

Judging from what Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters and David Seymour have been saying I suspect that under the guise of getting a quicker final result they will look at adjusting election day enrolments.

Luxon wants things done more quickly.  From Craig McCulloch and Russell Palmer at RNZ:

Luxon this week raised the possibility of speeding up the final vote count, saying a three-week delay is “way too long”. He suggested in interviews on Wednesday that the time allowed could be shortened, the Electoral Commission could release daily updates, and the commission could handle local elections.

He repeated that when speaking to reporters in Auckland on Thursday, ahead of the final results being released on Friday.

“It’s incredibly frustrating for everybody,” he said. “It’s sort of like, ‘hurry up and wait’. That’s why I would like the Electoral Commission to actually process special votes in a much quicker way going forward, if possible.”

David Seymour’s comments were even more pointed.  Again from RNZ:

If democracy’s worth doing it’s worth doing well, but I think people could ask the question: is it worth waiting an extra week in return for people’s ability to walk up and register instead of pre-registering? Reasonable people can argue either way on that, but that’s certainly a question that needs to be asked.”

And Winston Peters has criticised the change to the law which allowed election day enrolments which was a law change supported by none other than Winston Raymond Peters.  From Thomas Coughlan at the Herald:

NZ First leader Winston Peters today launched a broadside against the decision to allow people to enrol to vote on election day.

These votes are counted as special votes, which take ten times longer to count than other votes. As part of the rule change, the Electoral Commission now takes a week longer to publish final election results, including the special vote count.

Asked why NZ First had waited so long to begin coalition talks, which could have begun the day after polling day, Peters argued the real cause of the delay was the decision to allow people to enrol on election day.

“Here we are with a three week delay because people decided to have people enrol on election day,” Peters said.

The main reason for the delay is the hiatus built into the system to make sure that special votes and overseas votes are returned to their home electorate.  The law currently provides that 10 days is allowed for special votes to be returned from overseas and 13 days for special votes cast in New Zealand to be returned to their home electorate.  These periods could be shortened.  Use of couriers should mean that special votes cast within the country are returned to their home electorates.  And the checking and counting of special votes need not wait for receipt of all votes.

But I would not be surprised if there are actions to tighten up voting entitlement.  And of course the skewering of the scrum in favour of the right will be completely accidental.

45 comments on “What will National do about special voting rights? ”

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  1. mikesh 1
    11 November 2023 at 11:46 am

    Peters has always said that he would wait until the people's mandate was known before entering into coalition talks. This, I suppose, would involve waiting until the final count was completed.

    Although Peters is said to have been part of the cabinet which introduced election day enrollments, that doesn't necessarily mean that he supported the decision personally.

  2. Patricia Bremner 2
    11 November 2023 at 12:07 pm

    Everything and anything the Labour/Green Govt put in place is now at risk. Special vote enrolment on the day a prime example.

    National/Act/NZFirst will use their "mandate" if they can agree.crying

    Labour should have used theirs more in line with what the electorate wanted.sad

    Let us hope the tensions and strains plus overseas expectations modify some of the hardline Policies of the three parties.

    The fact they have had to reinstate Hipkins as PM and Sepoloni as DP, tells us they are struggling to agree fundamentals. loldevil

    Now to throw a blanket over events and "Look over here" journalism by Wade et al, to blot the copy books of two up and coming ministers in Labour. … Dirty Politics is rife. imo.angry

    • alwyn 2.1
      11 November 2023 at 2:37 pm

      ''Labour should have used theirs more in line with what the electorate wanted.".

      Well there would have gone the Maori Wards in Local Government. It would certainly appear that the electorate didn't want them so why did Labour push so hard to get them provided even if the electorate didn't want them?

      19% in favour, 45% opposed.

      https://www.newsroom.co.nz/pro/race-relations-among-most-divisive-issues-in-election-poll

      I wonder how many people are really in favour of allowing people to enroll on the day anyway? Have you any evidence that the electorate want it? I've never seen anything pointing either way. With the way the election went, and with Winnie seeming to have decided that he got it wrong in 2020 why should they not remove the option if they want to?

      • observer 2.1.1
        11 November 2023 at 2:51 pm

        Of course they could use their 51% majority in Parliament to change electoral law.

        Only problem being that they would prove that all previous opposition to such moves, in the name of "principle", was phoney (see waka-jumping law, electoral finance act, etc). Calls for a 75% majority now seem to be conveniently forgotten.

        In power, you either make changes to electoral law by cross-party consensus, as argued by Nats like Nick Smith in the past, or you make the self-serving changes to suit the government of the day.

        And one day soon, you aren't the government of the day and you can't claim "principle" any more.

        So, voting age at 16, no consensus, no problem. Because majority, eh?

        Electoral law review to follow transparency, Māori Roll changes | RNZ News

        “The review would be led by an independent panel and the government would work with parties across Parliament for broad, non-partisan changes” … was that the wrong approach?

        • alwyn 2.1.1.1
          11 November 2023 at 3:13 pm

          "Calls for a 75% majority now seem to be conveniently forgotten."

          What were these calls?

          As far as changing the law goes the 75% requirement applies to only 6 things in New Zealand law. One of them is the voting age. The ability to enroll on the day is not, and can be changed, as it was by the Labour-led Government, with a simple majority. It could be reversed just as simply should the incoming Government want to do so. So far I have seen nothing that says they intend to do so but it is certainly within their ability.

      • lprent 2.1.2
        12 November 2023 at 7:16 am

        I wonder how many people are really in favour of allowing people to enroll on the day anyway?

        Wonder no more, you will probably find out by looking at the electoral commission for the 2023 election that will come out early next year. The election day registrations will probably be 100% for election day registrations, and there will probably won't be that many of them. But it will increase exponentially from now on.

        They will be the people who moved flats to seek work, change education, seeking accommodation, or kicked out by landlords or simply don’t have a accessible letterbox. They are disappearing rapidly from public view because of the onslaught of junk mail – even amongst the affluent. Increasingly post-boxes are disappearing from them as well.

        My apartment block moved postboxes into our inaccessible lobby about 15 years ago to get away from that crap. Now the NZ post deliver a majority of our junk mail because they have a access code along with most parcel courier companies. The only mail I get are from legislation. Election commission, AT for parking files, banks telling me that they over charged me fees decades ago and asking what account to deposit their reparations in.

        But election day registration will also be a minority of special votes around the country on election day. Which after all account for for the vast majority of special votes. Basically people who weren’t in their electorate on election day – about 17-18% of the population.

        The length of the election day registration procedure on election day and in subsequent counting is similar in length to for doing any special vote. After all most will have previously been on a roll in previous elections or will have been born or immigrated here – in other words in the DIA's databases.

        So if National, Act and NZF were consistent about reducing the counting delay they would want to get rid of the time ‘wasted’ on all special votes, and disenfranchise anyone couldn’t get to their home polling booths on the day.

        The real cost of all of these is just checking that people are eligible to vote when it can’t be ruled off on election day.

        The most expensive will be the ~12% of special votes from overseas where eligibility requires

        If you live overseas, you can vote (and enrol to vote) if you:

        • are 18 years or older
        • have lived in New Zealand for more than 12 months continuously at some time in your life, and
        • meet one of the following residency criteria:
          • are a New Zealand citizen and have been in New Zealand within the last six years or
          • are a New Zealand permanent resident and have been in New Zealand within the last four years. 

        Now that is a difficult set of requirements to validate.

        //—

        Following your and Luxon's flawed logic (apparently mainly so he could hobnob at APEC) we should also look at 2020 voting practices for instance

        There was increased uptake (933 registrations, up from 610 in 2017) of the dictation service for people who could not mark the ballot paper due to vision or other disability.

        That by its very nature is a very costly in time. Luxon if he was capable of being consistent should look at reducing the cost by denying them the right to vote.

        //—

        Perhaps he would, for consistency sake, remove the ability to have special votes at all or to only allow advance voting like local body elections. After all doing advance and postal voting have been great at decreasing local body elections voting to well less than 50%. We get some very representative councils who represent districts with well-heeled citizens who can have all of the remaining postboxes and advance in their areas (as seen in Auckland). Those of course are also the districts that benefit from preferential funding for rate payer facilities and preferential rating policies for some unknown reason.

        //—–

        But of course following your clear thinking and logic about polling on Maori wards..

        We should also completely ignore the teeny minority of fools who expressed concern about

        • requirements to register firearms 9% compared to 75% – and remove them from Act's representation
        • the 14% of scientifically ignorant idiots who railed against mask requirements during covid vs the 68% who approved of them. Of course that would cause issues within NZF, Act, and probably National voter support.

        //—

        Or we could just call you a partisan hack who doesn't understand the basis of representative democracy nor the concepts behind a right to vote. Or just a plain stupid regressive fossil still secretly longing for the golden eras "When single women and Māori couldn't buy a home".

        • alwyn 2.1.2.1
          12 November 2023 at 9:46 am

          Oh dear. what was that line from Ian Fleming?

          "He disagreed with something that ate him"

          Still, you have managed to write a great long spiel with nothing to back it up from the simple question "I wonder how many people are really in favour of allowing people to enroll on the day anyway?"

          I don't actually recognise anything about myself in what you do say but I'm sure that won't bother you. I will offer one comment about voting that may stir you up though. I don't believe that anyone who is not a citizen should have the right to vote.

          If you do want to vote take out citizenship.

        • Ghostwhowalks 2.1.2.2
          12 November 2023 at 12:43 pm

          "who can have all of the remaining postboxes and advance in their areas (as seen in Auckland)"

          Think of a election with 30-40% turnout as a huge 'poll' with a ultra low margin of error.

          All councillors are from wards , and it seems they represent those voters. The Mayor is citywide

          Its wishful thinking to assume a 15% winning margin over the next candidate means the turnout is responsible for someones loss

          • lprent 2.1.2.2.1
            12 November 2023 at 2:45 pm

            Yeah and think of the preliminary election results as being an even bigger poll. Then where adding in 20% more votes from the specials demonstrates how wide the margin of error is in that large poll. The margin of error in a poll of ~2.2 million against ~3.3 million registered voters should have been +/- what? nothing much.

            Looking just at the NAct vote.
            Preliminary vote of 1,077,311 over 2,244,380 votes = 48.00% of votes cast.
            The current official vote of 1,332,323 over 2,851,220 votes = 46.67% of votes cast

            What we got was a error of more like 1.33% for those to associated parties combined just in the addition of 20% more votes were counted. That was sufficient to change from a coalition to form a government requiring two parties to one requiring three. Which gives us teh coalition of indecisive confusion and chaos that we will have tolerate for the next few years. The Shane Jones coalition…

            Obviously what is skewing the results is a poorly formed sample of the population due to sampling technique.

            In the case of a general election there is a pretty significiant skew between the population of advance and votes cast by people in their electorates or on the borders of those electorates, and people who do special votes. There is probably also a even more pronounced skew between those who vote at all and those who didn’t in the general election.

            I’d expect that in a local body elections that if anyone did the analysis on the 59% who didn’t vote because of the piss-poor sampling voting techniques, it’d skew more like 15%.

  3. Bearded Git 3
    11 November 2023 at 12:21 pm

    There seems to be an organised (Taxpayer Union and friends?) and concerted MSM lobby saying that a wait of three weeks is too long and the culprit is allowing people (students, Maori, renters and other mostly Left wing voters) to register on the day they vote.

    Two Comments on this:

    1. The three week wait made little difference. We all knew that a Nats/ACT/NZF government was a racing certainty and that Luxon was to be PM. Meanwhile preliminary discussions between the parties took place and a caretaker government ran the country.
    2. Excluding the thousands of register-on-the-day people would obviously be be undemocratic.

    In any event surely the Electoral commission can find a way to cut 2/3 days off the process?

    Seymour will produce a bill to prevent registration on the day. Luxon should order the Nats to vote against this-but he wont.

    Which means we all have to wonder what Winston will do? I heard on RadioNZ that NZF voted with Labour in support of register-on-the-day in the first place. I guess this must have been under the 2017-2020 government.

    • cathyo 3.1
      14 November 2023 at 9:59 am

      and as for Winnie complaining that the counting takes too long, who was it who stretched out the negotiations with Labour beyond belief on the first MMP election?

  4. Mike the Lefty 4
    11 November 2023 at 12:23 pm

    ACT can't wait to get stuck into ripping the social welfare and public service systems apart. Every day they have to wait is like an eternity to them.

  5. SPC 5
    11 November 2023 at 12:26 pm

    Will they investigate the election shambles?

    The late delivery of cards in south Auckland that would have discouraged early voting.

    The difficulty when the on-line system was down enrolling or being rejected from voting out of electorate (those moving from flat to flat or students) if without an enrollment card, and the lack of of papers (again) in south Auckland?

    It was as if those who want to reform the system to reduce voting access were administering the system we have on the day for the same impact.

    Here we presume incompetence, if in the USA deliberation

    • Belladonna 5.1
      11 November 2023 at 8:37 pm

      On a different, but related topic – online systems.
      There has just been another cock-up with online access for the NCEA Level 1 English paper.

      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/ncea-level-1-english-exam-issues-nzqa-stops-students-from-logging-in/DDZ2PQZD2NHJZOS2UCMEZI6UPY/

      About time, that the Government (of whichever composition) realized that online access has significant drawbacks, and is not a 'safe' first choice for important democratic or educational participation. Census. Election. NCEA exams. All with significant flaws in the online access.

      Yes online is 'cheap' (if you don't care about those disenfranchised), in comparison to paper-based and human-mediated systems. The problem is that it's not reliable.

      • Ghostwhowalks 5.1.1
        12 November 2023 at 12:35 pm

        Didnt the election day system only used by Vote NZ staff screw up too

        "“Extensive testing by our technology vendor gave NZQA confidence that this level of activity could be supported."….. LOL

        But it wasnt remote acess as the students were in an exam room

        "Students who were stopped from logging in were given paper copies of the exam to fill out instead, Marshall said."

        • lprent 5.1.1.1
          12 November 2023 at 1:39 pm

          I presume your latter quotes are related to this
          https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/350108288/2000-students-turn-ncea-level-1-english-online-exam-handed-paper-copy-system

          That would have been a remote system using wifi. So you’d most likely be doing a client system to wifi repeater to wifi switch to landline to provider to provider to server(s) for 18,000 connections. Each link of which has loading issues, transmission issues, and failure rates.

          I have been involved in building a lot of RF and land-line based remote servers and device systems over the last three decades using several different technologies. I wouldn’t want to build any electoral system based entirely on servers connected to RF devices on site or even land-line. Too difficult to test under real world conditions, and not running continuously or often enough to get incremental improvements. Plus everything is highly time dependent.

          The server side can’t really be tested until it was under election day loads. That is a load based on tens of thousands of queries per minute where the client side and transport side has some extremely varying request and response handling times, and able to be tested in the field only once every few years. It is going to fail under actual loads in some locations (including the servers)

          Similarly the client side needs to handle being put in 2300 different locations – many of which can’t be fully checked for RF interference beforehand. There are still quite a lot of areas of the country that have poor 3G/4G/LTE reception from various providers. I haven’t been involved in mapping parts the cell network since 2015 (when 2G was still available) but the outright holes and poor comms were pretty extensive on the transport routes that I looked at.

          That was in the open. After you factor in roofing, rooms, reinforced concrete, local RF emitters, and even just human bodies adsorbing RF – you realise just how fraught running reliable client end-point data access systems on RF are. Not so bad if it can be tested and made robust over decades on a installation by installation basis (think eft-pos) or where someone can move 25m aside to get a clear connection like internet banking. But bloody tricky on occasional use location dependent and time limited procedures.

          Plus a paper system simply isn’t that hard to operate in a timely manner. Biggest problem these days is the lack of printers – especially line-feed ones rather than page fed.

          At an Auckland Central polling booth on Elliot St, a Herald reporter casting a special vote was told it appeared the system for looking people up electronically was down, and workers were having to look some people up in printed rolls.

          Despite this, there was a wait of just 10-15 minutes before the special vote was able to be cast.

          Yeah. Paper systems have a lot of advantages.

          But the electronic electoral roll is actually pretty tiny in modern computing terms. It isn’t that hard to shove it into a encrypted lookup database and just have it loaded on a reasonably modern mobile device or laptop with a one-time usage. SQLite with SQLite Encryption Extension would do it just fine.

          For obvious privacy reasons you’d want the application to require a license startup/install and automatic immolation on shutdown. To have security against programmatic extraction. Ideally it’d require a local signal to anchor it to a polling area that would immolate it on removal. Way easier to develop and test. Probably harder to hack.

  6. UncookedSelachimorpha 6
    11 November 2023 at 12:31 pm

    Voter participation is far more important than a few days delay.

    Classic strategy of the authoritarian right world-wide – putting barriers in the way of voting and trying to drive down turnout.

  7. Grey Area 7
    11 November 2023 at 12:43 pm

    The push from the right for a faster election result is ironic given the issue now is Luxon needing time to put together a coalition of chaos "strong and stable" government. So this process dragging on is okay but taking time to get an accurate result, especially for special votes, is not

    Hypocrites much.

  8. ianmac 8
    11 November 2023 at 4:27 pm

    Don't expect that we will ever know but what if over the last week before polling day, a body of people who were not going to vote, suddenly realised that the Nact promises were hollow and dangerous. So chose to vote at the last minute? Bet the right would hate that.

  9. AB 9
    11 November 2023 at 7:21 pm

    National will constrain special voting to the fullest extent they can get away with. Their argument for doing so is weak – merely to speed up government formation rather than any suggestion of voter fraud. But that won't stop them. They have an ally in the media, whose fundamental shallowness means that when the horse race stops, they have nothing to say.

  10. Thinker 10
    11 November 2023 at 7:49 pm
    1. Not sure, but I don't think the special votes saw that big a swing to the left. Probably because they are not only new voters but also overseas voters.

    2. Even if NZ doesn't want to go full-tilt to a software driven voting system, surely there are opportunities for parts of the system to be software-driven that would speed up the process.

    Maybe, for example, special votes could be done with a computer-friendly pen and scanned by a machine reader. Any ambiguous special votes could be counted the old-fashioned way but because 95% of them were scan-counted it would speed up the counting process no end.

    Let's see if Luxon comes up with a similar solution, funded by ???

    3. If I was Luxon or Seymour, I wouldn't be so excited about the next 3 years. As I've said before:

    A. Luxon talked up expectations so much people are bound to be disappointed in things that can't be delivered;

    B. I imagine Luxon plans to use the fact of the coalition as a reason why some things can't be delivered but I think he's raised expecations about his leadership style to the extent that people will still be disappointed;

    C. Point A was about Luxon, but I think people who voted for Seymour and Peters will also be disappointed they gave their votes and didn't get some of the things they voted for.

    4. Again, what the three parties of the left should be doing, now, is to be meeting and forming a "Coalition of Consensus" – ready to take a concerted opposition to the incoming government.

    By being visibly working as a team, instead of three parties that happen to sit on neighbouring bench seats, it will juxtapose the government's Coalition of Keystone Kops and build a rapport with voters that will pay off in 2026.

    Be ready to speak with one voice against the worst of what will be announced in the negotiated package – don't be left running to catch the train after it's left the station.

    • alwyn 10.1
      11 November 2023 at 8:25 pm

      "By being visibly working as a team"

      Can you seriously claim that the TPM MPs are going to work as a team with anyone?

      I mean to say. Did they ever show any sign of it in the last Parliament?

      • Incognito 10.1.1
        11 November 2023 at 9:07 pm

        Necessity is the mother of invention.

      • Thinker 10.1.2
        11 November 2023 at 9:15 pm

        "The enemy of my enemy is my friend".

        If TPM wants to be part of the next government, it's going to have to work as a team in opposition, not least to be seen as a natural coalition partner of the left.

        IMHO, there's more common ground between TPM, Greens and Labour than there is between ACT, National and NZF. Also, don't forget the TPM has gone from a two-person voice in the house to a much more significant party. They won't need to shout so loudly as before to get the media attention. The country is going to expect to see more diplomacy and some of their new MPs seem to me to carry themselves well.

        Politics is all about compromises.

  11. Ad 11
    12 November 2023 at 8:56 am

    After we'll documented miscouts and missteps in 2023 voting, I want Luxon to tell the Electoral Commission to review rheir performance.

    That should include whether the legal right to enroll on the day is contributing to more mistakes and fumbles.

    I'm also keen to hear how many eligible in jail (after Little's reforms) took up the opportunity.

    I'd hoped that the 50% voting before elecday would take the heat off the election day staff so mistakes would be rare. They were actually very big and potentially costly to candidates.

    No fear from a review of the Commission's performance.

  12. tsmithfield 12
    12 November 2023 at 9:27 am

    One of the most democratic changes Labour made…

    And that is the contradiction. If Labour unilaterally changed the election system, then how can that be democratic? So, I think the change failed on first principles. Firstly, I think changes to the electoral system should have the full support of the house.

    • Drowsy M. Kram 12.1
      12 November 2023 at 11:11 am

      https://www.justice.govt.nz/assets/ris-enabling-election-day-enrolment.pdf

      The last NZ general election with a voter turnout above 90% was 1984 – 93.7%. This was, by a whisker, the highest voter turnout in NZ election history.

      In 6 of the 13 general election since (and in 6 of the last 8 elections, including 78.2% in 2023), NZ voter turnout has been below 80%.

      What would be the reason(s) for making changes that would likely decrease voter turnout? Why even contemplate making such anti-democratic changes? Why indeed.

      While voter turnout in Australia has fallen slightly in recent decades, and hovered around 90% in 2022, they haven't had a sub-90% voter turnout in almost 100 years.

      Imho, Kiwi govts of all flavours should do everything they can to increase voter turnout, and close the 10% gap between NZ and Australia that has opened up since 1984.

      If our next government actually doesn't want to increase voter turnout, then their other principles aren't worth shit, again imho.

      • Ghostwhowalks 12.1.1
        12 November 2023 at 12:27 pm

        Australia has compulsory voting, for federal, state , local council referendums and they do enforce it with a fine

        • Drowsy M. Kram 12.1.1.1
          12 November 2023 at 1:08 pm

          yes Australia has had compulsory voting for nearly a century.

          It is argued compulsory voting ensures elected governments are viewed as legitimate, with nearly all electors having their say through voting.
          …
          Only 27 countries out of 195 worldwide (13.8%) have compulsory voting.

          Compulsory voting will have been a factor in the widening gap between Aussie and Kiwi voter turnout since 1984, when the gap was 0.5%, to 2022/23 when the gap was ~12%. Mind the (widening voter turnout) gap, which would matter less if all Kiwi MPs were committed to serving all NZers to the best of their abilities.

          • Ghostwhowalks 12.1.1.1.1
            12 November 2023 at 2:08 pm

            2022 Australia Federal election for both 151 house seats and a half senate election was on 21st may 22

            Th writs were returned about 1 month later . So not so different to us in timeline, but the Senate is their tricky one to count- a few elections back they stuffed it up in WA and had to run a Senate election again.

            Also each MMP election is two separate votes which are counted separately, which adds to the confusion.

            Maybe the party vote be counted differently to de couple from the electorate vote

            By different I mean 'scanning' which is the means that local council votes are counted. Its also the method used for the so called infamous Dominion voting system, which produces a computer printed ballot paper from the dozens of different offices up for election in US election day – it just gives the person voted for and excludes the other candidates. These are scanned into the system or hand counted which is the back up process

            • Drowsy M. Kram 12.1.1.1.1.1
              12 November 2023 at 3:37 pm

              In NZ's first MMP election, ministers in the new National/NZF coalition govt were sworn in on 16 December 1996, over two months after voting closed.

              It's less than one month since voting closed in the 2023 election, and the 'need for speed' to form our latest new govt baffles me. Patience may not be one of the seven heavenly virtues, but it's not all bad – at least for my blood pressure.

              "There are three parties involved in this and I know Christopher Luxon wants to get this right… he wants to get things delivered, he's very impatient," she [Stanford] said.

              Might pollies be more patient if Aotearoa NZ had a four year-term of govt?

              • Ghostwhowalks …
                13 November 2023 at 10:35 am

                Good points .

                I think 1996 and 2017 were similar in that the two main parties were competing to lead the government. Double negotiations ?

                This time and many others thats not the case. Hipkins totally ruled out NZF and they are interested anyway with the shattering results they got

    • Ghostwhowalks 12.2
      12 November 2023 at 12:30 pm

      Only six provisions are entrenched , not all directly related to the actual voting process

      • the term of Parliament
      • the Representation Commission (a committee that determines electoral boundaries)
      • the division of New Zealand into general electorates
      • the 5% margin for the population of general electorates
      • the minimum voting age of 18
      • the method of secret voting.
  13. Incognito 13
    12 November 2023 at 10:05 am

    Nope, it wasn’t done unilaterally.

    A party vote was called for on the question, That the Electoral Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

    Ayes 63

    New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8.

    Noes 57

    New Zealand National 55; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

    Bill read a third time.

    https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/combined/HansDeb_20200304_20200304_28

    What do you mean by “full support of the house”? A unanimous 100% vote in favour?

    • tsmithfield 13.1
      12 November 2023 at 10:33 am

      Fair enough.

      But it wasn't a super majority or the like. That is what I mean. The electoral law should require support to the extent that a super majority is required in my opinion. A simple majority means that governments can make changes any time they want. A super majority of say 75% would require much broader support, and hence would be more democratic.

      • Incognito 13.1.1
        12 November 2023 at 11:02 am

        Whether a supermajority of 75% is always ‘more democratic’ is debatable. In this case (Election Day enrolment), it’s a rather simple technical question, which should not have to meet the supermajority requirement, IMO.

        • tsmithfield 13.1.1.1
          12 November 2023 at 11:36 am

          I agree it isn't akin to a whole new electoral system or the like. But, a super majority would safe guard the system as a whole. I think it is a case of erring on the side of caution. Otherwise it could end up as a slippery slope with respect to changes.

  14. Stephen D 14
    12 November 2023 at 11:47 am

    What will fascinate me is the way our msm handle the situation.

    Luxon seems to want to make it harder to vote in a general election. This goes against the grain of being able to take part in a fair and equitable society. In fact it’s positively Republican.

    Will our msm follow along like well trained labradoodles, or show some teeth in favour of democracy?

  15. Ghostwhowalks 15
    12 November 2023 at 12:24 pm

    Special votes mostly arent people enrolling on the day. The vast majority are just voting outside their electorate ( and where the booth doesnt have the voting papers) and are already enrolled.

    Of those who are enrolled but did so on the last 30 days before the poll date, they do wont appear on the printed rolls . Although these days polling booths use tablets to check the database for these people

    Special votes are 20% , but what % are those who actually enrol while voting ?

    • lprent 15.1
      12 November 2023 at 1:42 pm

      Special votes are 20% , but what % are those who actually enrol while voting ?

      WE don’t have the data. We will probably get it in the wash from the electoral commission early next year. But I’d expect that it will be way less than 5% of special votes.

  16. Christopher Randal 16
    12 November 2023 at 8:00 pm

    If MMP is a problem in getting results out perhaps STV would be a better idea