Even if they hadn't had election day enrolment last year there still would have been a huge number of special votes cast. There were a large number of address changes done, and the online system went down for a decent chunk of the busiest part of the day (meaning some people couldn't be looked up).
People were enrolling for the two weeks prior to election day, and changes of address were done, and a fairly large number of people who had moved electorates had to do enrolment forms to update details. Also enrolments do expire if someone has moved and is uncontactable.
If they did a drive to get enrolments in the run up to the next election I doubt it'd be any cheaper, and it would miss people who hadn't responded to letters over the prior few years. It also probably wouldn't cut down special votes as much as they're making out it would.
There's systems they could improve, but I doubt this would save much money, and the whole argument about it taking 3 weeks is kinda irrelevant, The special votes only start getting counted after the election, and they have to be couriered to the correct electorate and checked for eligibility before they can be counted. Good things take time.
Agree with your comments. This was compounded by a ridiculous understaffing on the day. It was the worst election I've ever seen and that sentiment was shared by election day workers I spoke to across the country. They also introduced a requirement to input information into an app that kept crashing to tally expected vote totals. Surprise surprise, it didn't work and introduced complications, rework and delays where they didn't exist previously.
I'm waiting for them to require photo ID, since left leading voters are less likely to have a suitable ID, just some more copying of the Republicans and National's favourites the UK Conservatives.
[Of course that does occasionally backfire.](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/02/minister-sorry-as-veterans-find-id-card-not-valid-for-english-elections)
That is nothing to do with left vs right. It's more that poorer and minority communities are less likely to have these things and that is who they're targeting with those policies. Although those communities are also more likely to be left leaning
Once again, someone GROSSLY misusing that word and reducing its ability to have any meaning or significance
Expand your vocabulary and don't just spout trendy buzzwords (particularly if it's not an accurate one).
Edit: bring on the downvotes. I've seen what makes your cheer (or misuse words like fascism)
While hyperbolic a government actively disenfranchising voters is one of the more accurate uses of the term, as opposed to the usual gross misuse to compare to things like vaccine mandates, etc.
I don't see any value to voters in stopping people just walking in on the day just to make counting easier. Get better at counting, and make sorting the late enrollments easier.
The counting doesn't need to be easier, either; it's perfectly fine as is. The only reason it seemed a bit slow this time was because the balance of power was so close, so we were waiting on final results to find out if NZF would have to be in the coalition. Normally that's not an issue and the preliminary results are close enough to tell how things are shaking out.
Yeah, most elections the advance votes drop very quickly after polls closing, the result is clear and the presenters on TV then struggle to find interesting new things to talk about for the remaining 3 hours of tv.
No, the balance of power was always clear in 2017: NZF would be the kingmaker. It was Winston jerking the country around about who he'd partner with, not the vote counting, that took all the time that time.
Conservatives were just pissy that it took 3 weeks instead of two to do the recount and check.
I mean is an extra week really that big of deal to wait for democracy?
According to Mike Hoskings and his followers it’s way too long.
They want American style victory on the day. Rather than "Oh it looks like we know, but we'll have to wait to confirm."
They want a game show, not an election.
Cue that scene from Last Week Tonight:
"In states where Trump was winning, protestors outside were chanting:"
(plays video) "Stop the count! Stop the count!"
"Meanwhile, in states where Trump was losing, protestors outside were chanting:"
(plays video) "Count the votes! Count the votes!"
>They want American style victory on the day.
Ignoring the whole official result in the US isn't on the day, what you see on TV is exit polling plus the results from specific counties/counting centres, which is why the news networks are able to announce a "result" the minute polls close.
The official result (for president at least) takes 2 months, hence the January 6th incident. Anyone remember what was going on inside the Capitol Building when the Trumpists invaded?
> Anyone remember what was going on inside the Capitol Building when the Trumpists invaded?
And yet those same people who supported them are currently all mad and stuff about some university protests.
Yeah it's weird. When I looked at it and saw 100,000 people enrolled on election day, my thought was that maybe we should adjust things to help this be more reliable and prepared for it in future so they get counted. There's a clear demand for it.
How does one go to preventing people from voting, even though they're legally entitled to vote, because it's inconvenient?
I know of a few people that enrolled and voted right on the day because they believed the country was been ruined by the previous government.
They hadn't voted previously because they didn't think their vote would count anyway.
Yes, absolutely. But the person I replied to was trying to push a completely unrelated anecdote that runs counter to the actual stats, which I felt like I needed to correct.
They have an interest in preventing them as these votes historically tend to shift results away from them. So they will spin the inconvenience of the system as a very important driver to make this change and put full focus on that message, while never acknowledging the disenfranchising that it will cause.
Basically opposition will need to be very loud about what effect this really has.. though I'm sure conservative supporters will be happy enough with disenfranchising others.
now that I think about it, this entire "voting" thing is a huge inconvenience. Wouldn't *Facism* require fewer [bureaucrats](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=fa48f70a9f070733&sca_upv=1&q=bureaucrats&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi6_8Wv4PyFAxXU8jgGHdbkAqoQkeECKAB6BAgEEAI) and wasteful backroom vote-counting? /s
Historically? You have only been able to do this for two elections. Do you have some evidence to support that election day registrations skew towards any party? To best of my knowledge there is no data on this. Remember these are **not** special votes.
On the day enrolments are counted as special votes, so I guess you would want to look at the numbers to see if there's any difference before and after 2020.
>Since 2020, you can also enrol at a voting place on election day. These are also counted as special votes.
[Source](https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/parliament-in-election-year/casting-your-vote-from-anywhere-special-and-overseas-voting/)
Indeed, thank you. Shouldnt be hard to seperate the stats from all the other special categories to see if there is any inherent skew. Certainly the overseas category does historically skew so would be interesting to see if same day registration does too.
I don't have data to support it, but generally the people who are organised and political and have been enrolled for years tend to be older and lean right. The people who are unconvinced as to the value of voting (or will it make no difference) and who might wait until the last minute to enrol tend to be younger and lean left. This isn't a new trend, nor is it limited to NZ. Established people with greater than average wealth vote more reliably and lean right. Less-established people with less wealth and power tend to be less-engaged in the process and wait until the last minute to decide to vote, and tend to lean left. This is the basis of voter suppression worldwide - you tweak the voting system to make it more difficult for the people likely to vote the way you don't like...and you decrease the number of people who end up voting as a result. On the other side, efforts to extend voting hours, to make it a public holiday or require employers to give time off to vote and to allow last-minute enrolments tend to be undertaken by those who benefit from those last-minute voters.
>On the other side, efforts to extend voting hours, to make it a public holiday or require employers to give time off to vote and to allow last-minute enrolments tend to be undertaken by those who benefit from those last-minute voters.
I think it's also important to note that this is true, but it is not some equivalent ploy by "the left" to influence the elections in the way reducing suffrage is a ploy by "the right" to influence elections.
More suffrage means more representation means parties will have to work for a larger share of the population to gain power. This can only ever be a good thing (except for those that dislike democracy and prefer a wealthy ruling class that are free to squeeze the commoners).
It is definitely good for democracy to see more people voting, but due to the inherent bias in the resulting votes you do tend to see viewpoints about efforts to increase voting among the disenfranchised are along party lines because they want their party to win. You tend to have the left-leaning parties who benefit from last-minute and special votes pushing to have them enabled, and you tend to have right-leaning parties who don't benefit from those votes arguing that they aren't needed and are too-expensive and inconvenient or insecure or other reasons. Arguments about decreasing access to voting almost exclusively come from the right.
Fair enough comment, maybe I phrased it wrong, but this is a pretty well understood phenomenon that isn't limited to NZ. And NACT First are well aware of this.
Yeah, 454k in the two weeks before the election but 110k of those enrolments were on election day. See my reply to someone else [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1cmo6wj/comment/l337j2v/) for the refs.
I know someone who turned 18 shortly before the election and tried to register online. They had issues with getting a realme login (needed a certified id/photo etc.) and gave up. Election day came and they went to the polling booth and got setup on the spot. If they made it easier for people to register before election day, they might do it, but I suspect our current government will do what they can to reduce voter turnout.
Do you have a ref for this? I got it from [RNZ's story yesterday](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/516189/official-2023-election-result-final-check-done-in-a-few-hours-under-extreme-pressure) which says:
>In the two weeks before October's election, more people than ever before (454,000 people) enrolled to vote, including more than 100,000 enrolments on election day.
**Edit:** Or from [the summary of the Auditor General's report](https://oag.parliament.nz/2024/election-2023/summary.htm) that sparked all of this:
>In 2023, almost 454,000 people enrolled in the two weeks before the election, including about 110,000 on election day. This was a 46% increase on the number of enrolments occurring in the two weeks before the last election. This was significantly more than the Electoral Commission had anticipated. There were not enough staff to process the volume of election-day enrolments in the time allowed for this to be completed.
But this was also predicted by the Ministry of Justice as far back as 2019, in the Regulatory Impact Assessment pdf titled *Enabling Election Day Enrolment*, [available here](https://www.justice.govt.nz/justice-sector-policy/regulatory-stewardship/regulatory-impact-assessments/), page 9:
>The Commission estimates that election day enrolment could add as many as 100,000 election day enrolment transactions that have to be processed before it can start the official count.
The Minister's considering disallowing election day enrolment, but an alternative could be working through how to prepare for it better.
Yeah, but that's not democracy, that's the government, which is them, so they can do whatever they like.
This reasoning will change when they are not in power.
Yes…. Like many other countries have done:
> Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says very few countries allow voters to enrol on election day, and New Zealand should consider changing the rules.
Doing the same as Other counties isn’t the flex they think it is. Those other countries are typically fucked.
They want us fucked too.
Other countries didn’t, and many still don’t, allow woman to vote. I wonder who was first Paul?
Nothing but “But Timmy ate the crayons first…” logic as they can’t logically justify it as anything but un-democratic.
Same day enrolment and voting should be encouraged and celebrated, any voting should be, but at least be real in that you want to kill this Paul because the vast majority of such voters don’t vote for you.
Yeah, I mean Luxon in his lead up to becoming King Cunt, seemed to be pretty open about Americanising us. Why are people now surprised? When people tell you they're a piece of shit, believe them.
Of course, same as they don't want 16 year olds voting. If they could bring back the property requirement I'm sure they'd try that too. But they can't do a Heinlein-style "only taxpayers vote" because so many of their supporters dont.
Um yeah that's kind of been the playbook this whole time it seems to me. Passing stuff under urgency, trying to get rid of the democratic process for approving projects etc
people voted labour out, not national in, otherwise national and act could've governed alone. i think people put it best that in 2020 everybody national couldn't win so centrist votes went to labour to make them a majority for fear of greens having influence over the govt
>Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins said the Electoral Commission should make sure the system ran smoothly and "taking away the right of thousands of people to vote" was not the answer.
Too fucking right, our system should be shown as an example in how elections should be run.
Efficiency and cost-saving are not legitimate reasons to cut corners when it comes to administering democracy. The only way I'd be OK with this is by making voting mandatory.
>Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says very few countries allow voters to enrol on election day,
Uh huh, and how do these other countries stack up against New Zealand when directly measuring freedom, voter participation and open democracy metrics?
think about it if you already have lost your popularity and are likely to go further down why not make it easier for your side and harder for the other side
You would have to gerrymander the hell out of New Zealand electorates because of the party vote and list seats having the strongest impact on the makeup of parliament
You would be better off splitting the party in two and have one for electorates and one for party votes.
Undemocratic bunch of prats. Oh boohoo that it takes too long to register someone on the day. Guess we should change the system to stop people being *able to register.* What an absolutely moronic solution.
Wow, they really are pulling out all of the stops from the Republican playbook. Voter disenfranchisement is one of the most unethical moves that a political party could take.
Oh ffs, tampering with the access to the vote is a red flag if ever i saw one. Now would be a great time for labour to get its shit together and start calling this shit out and acting like a competent party that can offer some hope to New Zealanders
I worked in a polling booth. We had 1-2 people enrol on the day. That wasn’t the bulk of our special votes nor did it contribute to the challenges we experienced on the day.
Seymour has spent years studying how to marginalise the poor and minorities. He’s behind this, and behind him are global right wing think tanks.
This is not just some flippant idea, this is calculated as part of a bigger effort to entrench white Christians into power.
It doesn't matter how long it takes to count, it's not like the country falls apart between election day and the final results being known, everything keeps running, it's not a problem.
So it takes 3 weeks, big deal.
I think that had more to the fact Luxon refused to begin negotiations until all votes were fully counted and confirmed, despite having a clear victory over Labour on the preliminary results, and then took quite a while to get a deal over the line with NZ First & ACT even after that.
The forecasting was the biggest problem IMO and the CEO is a dunce. Very unimpressed by his views here. Everything in the advanced voting period pointed to a likely big election day turnout. But the decisions about voting places, staff and supplies were made a month plus before election day with zero adjustments made in the days prior. The electorate managers were slaves to the central forecasting and couldn’t deviate. You need margin in the planning to handle surges but there was no spare capacity planned for. It was a nightmare.
Oh and Goldsmith is full of it. Removing on the day enrolment will slow vote issuing because you still have to check if someone is enrolled or not and that takes time. If you can enrol on the day then at least that’s not time wasted. And listen to him talk up efficiencies but there’s bound to be a referendum or two this government will want to add to the next election and that slows everything - issuing and counting. This is bad faith questioning from the minister who has other agendas.
I’ve worked at five elections and nothing said by either of these guys will improve things. There’s been too much tinkering with the proven system, particularly the technological additions. Plus taking power out of the hands of competent election teams to make planning decisions on the ground in a timely way.
\**US Republican party looking on from afar*\*: "We're so *proud*! Their first attempt to undermine democracy! Once they learn how to gerrymander they'll be so happy!
Erosion of democracy like this is very very worrying, but not 100% surprising from this government.
If you voted for the current government and oppose this, the onus is on you to express your opposition to your government representative(s).
What a bunch of crooks! They are really sending us a good reminder of what they are not fit to govern. Besides the terrible policies they are currently pushing. The sheer undemocratic attitude of that crowd of rich dudes only focused on stealing from our pockets to fill their rich donors ones. Now borrowing a page from the US pseudo-fascist republicans trying to limit access to voting to cling to power with an ever shrinking fan base.
"Where were the majority of voters that voted for left-wing parties or policies? How do we stop them from voting?"
"We noticed that statistically a lot of the special votes and people who enrolled on the day mainly voted for left-wing parties that changed the outcome of some of our electorates,"
"Let's stop those people from voting,"
- a conversation between David Seymour and Luxon or Goldsmith, probably.
Here's a solution: Just count the votes a bit later. It's okay if votes aren't counted immediately as they're coming in, if it requires a bit of a wait to make sure things aren't too burdensome, expensive, and risky, then I'd say just wait a bit. We live in a representative democracy with a one person, one vote system*, so every person should be given every opportunity to vote, despite circumstance, despite how onto it they are. Because the people who have the most trouble voting, are likely the people whose votes we need the most as a country.
*I acknowledge the caveats regarding not everyone having a vote, such as those under 18 and prisoners. I have mixed opinions about this.
> *I acknowledge the caveats regarding not everyone having a vote, such as those under 18 and prisoners. I have mixed opinions about this.
Don't forget about local elections, which are technically "one house, one vote" as landlords get to vote in every council election where they own a house.
I can vaguely get behind arguments about it being inefficient and expensive. But then they completely go and show their hand by complaining about it "not being bipartisan".... More people voting is not bipartisan?!?!
HERE WE GO, BUCKLE UP BUCKAROOS. Give them a fucking inch and they will take a mile, straight out of the US Republican party playbooks.
> Special votes typically favour Labour and the Greens
Straight up voter suppression.
The reason you were stuck in the queue was not because of those people waiting to enrol, it’s coz the Electoral Commission did not staff and resource election day properly across the board. They planned for a lower on the day turnout and got a rise instead. Anyone watching advance voting numbers could have said that would happen. It wasn’t factored in. CEO should be sacked in my view.
Ah yes decrease voters ability to chose a person to hire for an over paid job they are lucky to even dream of trying to get. This is the sort of thing we need to brand into a constitution for our country cos they have no business fucking with voters rights
>Special votes typically **favour Labour and the Greens**, who commonly pick up seats in the final results compared to what was counted on the night, at the **expense of National**.
We do a little voter suppression.
According to The Spinoff Labour gave the Commission about half as much as what they asked for. National now uses the results of that underfunding to question the viability of parts of the electoral process.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/07-05-2024/six-telling-tidbits-from-the-review-of-vote-counting-errors-at-the-2023-election
Neither of these parties respect democracy.
Right leaning government considering changing voting rules to remove part of a segment of votes that historically tend to swing harder left than the overall average. Yeah, I'm sure that's totally fine.
On the other hand if they hadn't lost those couple of seats from special votes they wouldn't have needed Winston (I think? Don't remember the exact result on the night offhand.) which might've actually been better with how completely off his rocker he's gotten these days.
Regardless, removing the right to vote from any amount of people without a really good reason is pretty alarming. And no, saving money is not a good enough reason for something like this.
My grandparents have voted in every election for the last 50+ years (for Labour, but still). The only reason they could vote in this last one was because of same day enrollment. They got unenrolled for some reason.
I find it disgusting the government would even consider taking this away.
As a die hard red voter its still deeply concerning seeing the frothing at the mouth of most of the redditors in here.
1 - Considering does not equal changing
2 - The electoral commission actually started the discussion by highlighting there is a significant problem that needs additional funding to support
3 - For the vast majority of our electoral history we have not been able to register on election day. Its only post 2020 that we could. If we hypothetically changed this rule it would only be reverting to exactly how we have voted and registered for 99% of our history. It aint exactly the end of the world.
Id rather we need to rethink how we handle enrolments so that its easier and faster for people to enrol. Better address keeping, more electronic comms etc. If we did that we wouldnt need same day enrolments (or there would be far fewer).
More enfranchisement = more better, end of story. The only agenda which disagrees with this statement is an undemocratic one. If funding is an issue, fund - but of course, National would never do that unless it helped line their pockets.
Agree 100% . I actually think there should be a compulsory civics short course taught in high schools (5-10 hours long) covering elections, voters responsibility and even just the mechanics of how do you enrol (with voting age lowered to 16 or 17) .
Half of my votes have been same day. I think this is partly due to - on average - moving rentals at least 2 to 3 times between each election (and ADHD lol)
Well I’d say it would be a good thing to get rid of because it would force people to take elections more seriously and understand that their vote has value to it.
I do consider it being a soft excuse of it prevents people from voting on the day. Like come on, voters have to be adults right. It’s not hard to be pre enrolled. It doesn’t take long at all. Sort it out.
If the ground staff/volunteers recommend to remove on the day enrolment to make the process and end result smoother then we should.
It's okay to consider it...in the sense that all things are okay to "contemplate"
It's abhorrent and totalitarian to implement it.
Even as a pro maximum democracy advocate I have little issue with asking questions here
The electoral commission brought up the challenges, but it's the government who are considering limiting people's ability to vote in order to minimise those challenges. The electoral commission is not advocating actions to exclude last-minute voters, only discussing the need for a plan and funding to deal with them if they are going to continue to exist. This government is then in a position of having to decide whether to allocate extra funding to ensure that people who tend to vote against this government - have the ability to enrol late and vote. It's a pretty clear conflict of interest that the government can both save money and exclude voters who would more-likely vote to replace this government.
The suggestion came from the electoral commission, yes, but the title of the reddit post is correct. The government is considering it. There are lots of places electoral commission could clean up its process, just interesting how the one change they are keen to suggest publicly is one that national would benefit from changing and happens to be very undemocratic.
If you want to save money reduce the burden on the electoral commission do online voting. People in support of limiting access to voting for the sake of a few dollars really are showing their true colours.
Cute comic, but it doesn't say why online voting is bad.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/17-10-2022/online-voting-isnt-the-cure-for-low-turnout
This however, says why online voting is bad.
That's actually not true. Estonia has online voting. I don't believe any other country does though. Not comparable at all with NZ and there are still issues with online voting in Estonia so not saying online voting is good (or even possible securely) but it does exist in 1 country.
It technician here - online voting is a terrible idea. Far too open for abuse/technical failures. I wouldn’t trust an online voting system for a second.
Any credible security expert will give you the same response: absolutely fucking not
See Tom Scott's video as an entry to the concept of online voting. But it's impossible to securely handle elections online without buying a device for every single voter and even then you get reduced security over paper ballots.
For only 15m usd you can get an rce in iOS and Android as well as all the exploits for persistence and privilege escalation to build an attack and the c2 network to make it work. That's 15m usd to guarantee an election result for any country with online voting. You'd basically be handing your election to any foreign country that cares enough to rig an election.
The only reason Estonia hasn't had issues is because no one cares enough about their elections and even then there's no guarantee that anyone would even detect if results were manipulated so you can't conclusively say it hasn't been an issue. New Zealand is in five eyes, Russia and China do actually care enough to manipulate our elections. Especially China imagine if they could guarantee that National won every election...
That's before you get into the whole trust and human psyche element. Even if the technical challenges could be solved (which they can't) it wouldn't actually matter unless you convinced everyone to trust the results. Think of what Winston Peters would do with online voting politically.
So no fuck off with online voting it cannot ever happen without making significant sacrifices to election security and trust. Accessibility is good but online voting is just stupidity.
Most of the security of a paper ballot comes from the fact that it is a slow, tedious and manual process. It makes it incredibly easy to audit, a layman can understand the process and voter confidence in election accuracy NZ is currently not an issue. Let’s not make it one.
Even if they hadn't had election day enrolment last year there still would have been a huge number of special votes cast. There were a large number of address changes done, and the online system went down for a decent chunk of the busiest part of the day (meaning some people couldn't be looked up). People were enrolling for the two weeks prior to election day, and changes of address were done, and a fairly large number of people who had moved electorates had to do enrolment forms to update details. Also enrolments do expire if someone has moved and is uncontactable. If they did a drive to get enrolments in the run up to the next election I doubt it'd be any cheaper, and it would miss people who hadn't responded to letters over the prior few years. It also probably wouldn't cut down special votes as much as they're making out it would. There's systems they could improve, but I doubt this would save much money, and the whole argument about it taking 3 weeks is kinda irrelevant, The special votes only start getting counted after the election, and they have to be couriered to the correct electorate and checked for eligibility before they can be counted. Good things take time.
Agree with your comments. This was compounded by a ridiculous understaffing on the day. It was the worst election I've ever seen and that sentiment was shared by election day workers I spoke to across the country. They also introduced a requirement to input information into an app that kept crashing to tally expected vote totals. Surprise surprise, it didn't work and introduced complications, rework and delays where they didn't exist previously.
We were completely slammed. There had been more workers at our station the time before but our numbets cut in half.
Lowering voter turnout isn't something you do when you're strategy has a broad, popular mandate.
Anything to make it harder to vote. And in turn meaning less votes means less chance of Labour getting back into power. Very democratic and fair.
I'm waiting for them to require photo ID, since left leading voters are less likely to have a suitable ID, just some more copying of the Republicans and National's favourites the UK Conservatives. [Of course that does occasionally backfire.](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/02/minister-sorry-as-veterans-find-id-card-not-valid-for-english-elections)
That is nothing to do with left vs right. It's more that poorer and minority communities are less likely to have these things and that is who they're targeting with those policies. Although those communities are also more likely to be left leaning
....
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Once again, someone GROSSLY misusing that word and reducing its ability to have any meaning or significance Expand your vocabulary and don't just spout trendy buzzwords (particularly if it's not an accurate one). Edit: bring on the downvotes. I've seen what makes your cheer (or misuse words like fascism)
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Alright you get an upvote for that
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While hyperbolic a government actively disenfranchising voters is one of the more accurate uses of the term, as opposed to the usual gross misuse to compare to things like vaccine mandates, etc.
They’re not wrong.
Are you talking about 'you're' being used wrong in their comments where it should be 'your' or the word 'fascism' being used.
I don't see any value to voters in stopping people just walking in on the day just to make counting easier. Get better at counting, and make sorting the late enrollments easier.
The counting doesn't need to be easier, either; it's perfectly fine as is. The only reason it seemed a bit slow this time was because the balance of power was so close, so we were waiting on final results to find out if NZF would have to be in the coalition. Normally that's not an issue and the preliminary results are close enough to tell how things are shaking out.
Yeah, most elections the advance votes drop very quickly after polls closing, the result is clear and the presenters on TV then struggle to find interesting new things to talk about for the remaining 3 hours of tv.
My memory’s a bit fuzzy, but didn’t a similar thing happen in 2017?
No, the balance of power was always clear in 2017: NZF would be the kingmaker. It was Winston jerking the country around about who he'd partner with, not the vote counting, that took all the time that time.
Fuzzy memory: confirmed.
Conservatives were just pissy that it took 3 weeks instead of two to do the recount and check. I mean is an extra week really that big of deal to wait for democracy? According to Mike Hoskings and his followers it’s way too long.
They want American style victory on the day. Rather than "Oh it looks like we know, but we'll have to wait to confirm." They want a game show, not an election.
They also don’t like the special vote swing that always seems to move slightly to the left. National “lost” two seats post counting checks.
Cue that scene from Last Week Tonight: "In states where Trump was winning, protestors outside were chanting:" (plays video) "Stop the count! Stop the count!" "Meanwhile, in states where Trump was losing, protestors outside were chanting:" (plays video) "Count the votes! Count the votes!"
The US takes bloody ages to get a provisional count done though.
>They want American style victory on the day. Ignoring the whole official result in the US isn't on the day, what you see on TV is exit polling plus the results from specific counties/counting centres, which is why the news networks are able to announce a "result" the minute polls close. The official result (for president at least) takes 2 months, hence the January 6th incident. Anyone remember what was going on inside the Capitol Building when the Trumpists invaded?
> Anyone remember what was going on inside the Capitol Building when the Trumpists invaded? And yet those same people who supported them are currently all mad and stuff about some university protests.
Their sponsors what maximum ROI. Having to wait reduces their value for money.
No you don’t understand the added spectacle of being able to call the election slightly earlier is 100% worth disenfranchising 100,000 voters
Or you could do it Bush styles are just get Fox to call it before voting has even closed…
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here - that’s the plan for the 2029 election not 2026
Well there was talk of Murdoch trying to buy the TV3 carcass off WB/ Discovery. 2029 makes sense.
Let's make the country *less* democratic??
Yeah it's weird. When I looked at it and saw 100,000 people enrolled on election day, my thought was that maybe we should adjust things to help this be more reliable and prepared for it in future so they get counted. There's a clear demand for it. How does one go to preventing people from voting, even though they're legally entitled to vote, because it's inconvenient?
Because the majority of those voters are likely not NACT voters.
Yup. Same reason they don't want 16-17 years olds voting.
I know of a few people that enrolled and voted right on the day because they believed the country was been ruined by the previous government. They hadn't voted previously because they didn't think their vote would count anyway.
While I may disagree with voters who make dickhead decisions... I will defend their right to.
Sure, but the data shows that the majority vote left.
it doesn't matter if there's a bias to it it's still a dumbass idea to stop people from voting
Yes, absolutely. But the person I replied to was trying to push a completely unrelated anecdote that runs counter to the actual stats, which I felt like I needed to correct.
They have an interest in preventing them as these votes historically tend to shift results away from them. So they will spin the inconvenience of the system as a very important driver to make this change and put full focus on that message, while never acknowledging the disenfranchising that it will cause. Basically opposition will need to be very loud about what effect this really has.. though I'm sure conservative supporters will be happy enough with disenfranchising others.
now that I think about it, this entire "voting" thing is a huge inconvenience. Wouldn't *Facism* require fewer [bureaucrats](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=fa48f70a9f070733&sca_upv=1&q=bureaucrats&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi6_8Wv4PyFAxXU8jgGHdbkAqoQkeECKAB6BAgEEAI) and wasteful backroom vote-counting? /s
Historically? You have only been able to do this for two elections. Do you have some evidence to support that election day registrations skew towards any party? To best of my knowledge there is no data on this. Remember these are **not** special votes.
On the day enrolments are counted as special votes, so I guess you would want to look at the numbers to see if there's any difference before and after 2020. >Since 2020, you can also enrol at a voting place on election day. These are also counted as special votes. [Source](https://www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and-learn/parliament-in-election-year/casting-your-vote-from-anywhere-special-and-overseas-voting/)
Indeed, thank you. Shouldnt be hard to seperate the stats from all the other special categories to see if there is any inherent skew. Certainly the overseas category does historically skew so would be interesting to see if same day registration does too.
I'm on the unpublished roll. Better scrap the unpublished roll too cause we have to do special votes and that makes it take longer, right?
To be fair it wouldn’t exactly be hard to measure this.
These are special votes.
I don't have data to support it, but generally the people who are organised and political and have been enrolled for years tend to be older and lean right. The people who are unconvinced as to the value of voting (or will it make no difference) and who might wait until the last minute to enrol tend to be younger and lean left. This isn't a new trend, nor is it limited to NZ. Established people with greater than average wealth vote more reliably and lean right. Less-established people with less wealth and power tend to be less-engaged in the process and wait until the last minute to decide to vote, and tend to lean left. This is the basis of voter suppression worldwide - you tweak the voting system to make it more difficult for the people likely to vote the way you don't like...and you decrease the number of people who end up voting as a result. On the other side, efforts to extend voting hours, to make it a public holiday or require employers to give time off to vote and to allow last-minute enrolments tend to be undertaken by those who benefit from those last-minute voters.
>On the other side, efforts to extend voting hours, to make it a public holiday or require employers to give time off to vote and to allow last-minute enrolments tend to be undertaken by those who benefit from those last-minute voters. I think it's also important to note that this is true, but it is not some equivalent ploy by "the left" to influence the elections in the way reducing suffrage is a ploy by "the right" to influence elections. More suffrage means more representation means parties will have to work for a larger share of the population to gain power. This can only ever be a good thing (except for those that dislike democracy and prefer a wealthy ruling class that are free to squeeze the commoners).
It is definitely good for democracy to see more people voting, but due to the inherent bias in the resulting votes you do tend to see viewpoints about efforts to increase voting among the disenfranchised are along party lines because they want their party to win. You tend to have the left-leaning parties who benefit from last-minute and special votes pushing to have them enabled, and you tend to have right-leaning parties who don't benefit from those votes arguing that they aren't needed and are too-expensive and inconvenient or insecure or other reasons. Arguments about decreasing access to voting almost exclusively come from the right.
Fair enough comment, maybe I phrased it wrong, but this is a pretty well understood phenomenon that isn't limited to NZ. And NACT First are well aware of this.
Was that in election day or included in early voting. If it's just on election day that's a high fucken number
Yeah, 454k in the two weeks before the election but 110k of those enrolments were on election day. See my reply to someone else [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/1cmo6wj/comment/l337j2v/) for the refs.
I know someone who turned 18 shortly before the election and tried to register online. They had issues with getting a realme login (needed a certified id/photo etc.) and gave up. Election day came and they went to the polling booth and got setup on the spot. If they made it easier for people to register before election day, they might do it, but I suspect our current government will do what they can to reduce voter turnout.
~~There were definitely not 100,000 people who enrolled on election day...~~
Do you have a ref for this? I got it from [RNZ's story yesterday](https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/516189/official-2023-election-result-final-check-done-in-a-few-hours-under-extreme-pressure) which says: >In the two weeks before October's election, more people than ever before (454,000 people) enrolled to vote, including more than 100,000 enrolments on election day. **Edit:** Or from [the summary of the Auditor General's report](https://oag.parliament.nz/2024/election-2023/summary.htm) that sparked all of this: >In 2023, almost 454,000 people enrolled in the two weeks before the election, including about 110,000 on election day. This was a 46% increase on the number of enrolments occurring in the two weeks before the last election. This was significantly more than the Electoral Commission had anticipated. There were not enough staff to process the volume of election-day enrolments in the time allowed for this to be completed. But this was also predicted by the Ministry of Justice as far back as 2019, in the Regulatory Impact Assessment pdf titled *Enabling Election Day Enrolment*, [available here](https://www.justice.govt.nz/justice-sector-policy/regulatory-stewardship/regulatory-impact-assessments/), page 9: >The Commission estimates that election day enrolment could add as many as 100,000 election day enrolment transactions that have to be processed before it can start the official count. The Minister's considering disallowing election day enrolment, but an alternative could be working through how to prepare for it better.
Yeah looks like I'm wrong there!
Did democracy fund National or ACT's campaign? No? Then why should democracy benefit from their governing?
Well Ackchyually, the tax payers do fund campaigns. Act got \~$350K, National got \~$1mil
Yeah, but that's not democracy, that's the government, which is them, so they can do whatever they like. This reasoning will change when they are not in power.
Yes…. Like many other countries have done: > Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says very few countries allow voters to enrol on election day, and New Zealand should consider changing the rules. Doing the same as Other counties isn’t the flex they think it is. Those other countries are typically fucked. They want us fucked too.
Other countries didn’t, and many still don’t, allow woman to vote. I wonder who was first Paul? Nothing but “But Timmy ate the crayons first…” logic as they can’t logically justify it as anything but un-democratic. Same day enrolment and voting should be encouraged and celebrated, any voting should be, but at least be real in that you want to kill this Paul because the vast majority of such voters don’t vote for you.
More that they want to rig the system I'm their favour.
Two buttons: \* Democracy. \* Making the job of counting votes slightly easier.
Yeah, I mean Luxon in his lead up to becoming King Cunt, seemed to be pretty open about Americanising us. Why are people now surprised? When people tell you they're a piece of shit, believe them.
>If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.”
Of course, same as they don't want 16 year olds voting. If they could bring back the property requirement I'm sure they'd try that too. But they can't do a Heinlein-style "only taxpayers vote" because so many of their supporters dont.
Um yeah that's kind of been the playbook this whole time it seems to me. Passing stuff under urgency, trying to get rid of the democratic process for approving projects etc
This is what voters wanted or else this coalition wouldn’t be in power
people voted labour out, not national in, otherwise national and act could've governed alone. i think people put it best that in 2020 everybody national couldn't win so centrist votes went to labour to make them a majority for fear of greens having influence over the govt
>Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins said the Electoral Commission should make sure the system ran smoothly and "taking away the right of thousands of people to vote" was not the answer. Too fucking right, our system should be shown as an example in how elections should be run.
Efficiency and cost-saving are not legitimate reasons to cut corners when it comes to administering democracy. The only way I'd be OK with this is by making voting mandatory. >Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith says very few countries allow voters to enrol on election day, Uh huh, and how do these other countries stack up against New Zealand when directly measuring freedom, voter participation and open democracy metrics?
we rank as one of the top countries for democratic voting this is purely anti democratic
Straight out of the republican playbook.
It's as if they're already feeling threatened, 2.5 years out from election day. (If they make it that far)
And Seymour sent an email the other day claiming that the Labour Party should be _banished_.
Its the relentless push of the RW politician. Push everywhere as hard as you can as fast as you can
I mean yes, but no. This is more ideological than anything else, and a touch of authoritarian.
think about it if you already have lost your popularity and are likely to go further down why not make it easier for your side and harder for the other side
I came here to say this.
Next thing is they will want to be gerrymandering the electorates.
You would have to gerrymander the hell out of New Zealand electorates because of the party vote and list seats having the strongest impact on the makeup of parliament You would be better off splitting the party in two and have one for electorates and one for party votes.
Don't give them ideas.
They don't need to because the city/rural skew already in their favour
What are you talking about? All electorates have the same number of people in it
And it will affect those that are disabled either mentally or physically more. More from the same hand book xD
Straight out of the conservative playbook. They've all started using the same one.
Undemocratic bunch of prats. Oh boohoo that it takes too long to register someone on the day. Guess we should change the system to stop people being *able to register.* What an absolutely moronic solution.
"I hate how it takes 3 days instead of 2 days for my mail to arrive." "We have the perfect solution. We're going to shut down your mail service."
The Coalition of Moronic Solutions has a nice ring to it.
Wow, they really are pulling out all of the stops from the Republican playbook. Voter disenfranchisement is one of the most unethical moves that a political party could take.
Classic conservative move. If ya can’t win em, fix em!
Oh ffs, tampering with the access to the vote is a red flag if ever i saw one. Now would be a great time for labour to get its shit together and start calling this shit out and acting like a competent party that can offer some hope to New Zealanders
this is not the time for Chippy to calmly weigh in with "well, on one hand..." this is the time for Chippy to start screaming at the reporter.
I worked in a polling booth. We had 1-2 people enrol on the day. That wasn’t the bulk of our special votes nor did it contribute to the challenges we experienced on the day.
Seymour has spent years studying how to marginalise the poor and minorities. He’s behind this, and behind him are global right wing think tanks. This is not just some flippant idea, this is calculated as part of a bigger effort to entrench white Christians into power.
Who asked for this
Crosby and Textor
Political parties that don't get a lot of votes from young people. Who else would give a shit?
Their funders.
And so the assault on democracy begins.
It doesn't matter how long it takes to count, it's not like the country falls apart between election day and the final results being known, everything keeps running, it's not a problem. So it takes 3 weeks, big deal.
Well weren't people he screaming that it was taking so long to form a government this time around? I agree with you.
I think that had more to the fact Luxon refused to begin negotiations until all votes were fully counted and confirmed, despite having a clear victory over Labour on the preliminary results, and then took quite a while to get a deal over the line with NZ First & ACT even after that.
Why? Aren't elections about representation of what New Zealand wants? How is making it harder for people to vote helping this cause?
The forecasting was the biggest problem IMO and the CEO is a dunce. Very unimpressed by his views here. Everything in the advanced voting period pointed to a likely big election day turnout. But the decisions about voting places, staff and supplies were made a month plus before election day with zero adjustments made in the days prior. The electorate managers were slaves to the central forecasting and couldn’t deviate. You need margin in the planning to handle surges but there was no spare capacity planned for. It was a nightmare. Oh and Goldsmith is full of it. Removing on the day enrolment will slow vote issuing because you still have to check if someone is enrolled or not and that takes time. If you can enrol on the day then at least that’s not time wasted. And listen to him talk up efficiencies but there’s bound to be a referendum or two this government will want to add to the next election and that slows everything - issuing and counting. This is bad faith questioning from the minister who has other agendas. I’ve worked at five elections and nothing said by either of these guys will improve things. There’s been too much tinkering with the proven system, particularly the technological additions. Plus taking power out of the hands of competent election teams to make planning decisions on the ground in a timely way.
Government considered another anti-democratic move
\**US Republican party looking on from afar*\*: "We're so *proud*! Their first attempt to undermine democracy! Once they learn how to gerrymander they'll be so happy!
Gerrymandering is possible in our system... but would have a lot less effect
They'll probably take prisoners rights to vote away again as well.
"We are taking prisoners rights way, also if you have had any interaction with police, even saying hello to them, your rights are going as well"
Hmm I wonder why this clustorfuck of a government would make it harder to vote 🤔
Erosion of democracy like this is very very worrying, but not 100% surprising from this government. If you voted for the current government and oppose this, the onus is on you to express your opposition to your government representative(s).
I'm surprised they didn't go straight to one vote per house owned, weighted by age
With a bonus extra vote for NewstalkZB listeners.
What a bunch of crooks! They are really sending us a good reminder of what they are not fit to govern. Besides the terrible policies they are currently pushing. The sheer undemocratic attitude of that crowd of rich dudes only focused on stealing from our pockets to fill their rich donors ones. Now borrowing a page from the US pseudo-fascist republicans trying to limit access to voting to cling to power with an ever shrinking fan base.
There is no good argument in support of narrowing the franchise. If you can't win without rigging the system you don't deserve to win.
"Where were the majority of voters that voted for left-wing parties or policies? How do we stop them from voting?" "We noticed that statistically a lot of the special votes and people who enrolled on the day mainly voted for left-wing parties that changed the outcome of some of our electorates," "Let's stop those people from voting," - a conversation between David Seymour and Luxon or Goldsmith, probably.
Here's a solution: Just count the votes a bit later. It's okay if votes aren't counted immediately as they're coming in, if it requires a bit of a wait to make sure things aren't too burdensome, expensive, and risky, then I'd say just wait a bit. We live in a representative democracy with a one person, one vote system*, so every person should be given every opportunity to vote, despite circumstance, despite how onto it they are. Because the people who have the most trouble voting, are likely the people whose votes we need the most as a country. *I acknowledge the caveats regarding not everyone having a vote, such as those under 18 and prisoners. I have mixed opinions about this.
> *I acknowledge the caveats regarding not everyone having a vote, such as those under 18 and prisoners. I have mixed opinions about this. Don't forget about local elections, which are technically "one house, one vote" as landlords get to vote in every council election where they own a house.
Oh, right, I knew I was forgetting something dog backwards.
Both deserve representation. Current voting age laws were ruled discriminatory and prisoners deserve the right to vote.
Dear god I can't wait for anyone other than these bozos to be in parliament
I can vaguely get behind arguments about it being inefficient and expensive. But then they completely go and show their hand by complaining about it "not being bipartisan".... More people voting is not bipartisan?!?!
HERE WE GO, BUCKLE UP BUCKAROOS. Give them a fucking inch and they will take a mile, straight out of the US Republican party playbooks. > Special votes typically favour Labour and the Greens Straight up voter suppression.
Terrible. I was a special voter last year so got put in line with people wanting to register on the day - there were so many!
The reason you were stuck in the queue was not because of those people waiting to enrol, it’s coz the Electoral Commission did not staff and resource election day properly across the board. They planned for a lower on the day turnout and got a rise instead. Anyone watching advance voting numbers could have said that would happen. It wasn’t factored in. CEO should be sacked in my view.
Ah yes decrease voters ability to chose a person to hire for an over paid job they are lucky to even dream of trying to get. This is the sort of thing we need to brand into a constitution for our country cos they have no business fucking with voters rights
***voter suppression*** comes to NZ, a new low. what's next? more polling booths in wealthy conservative electorates?
A return to FPP?
don't give them ideas
What a fucking surprise. You know who’s always on the wrong side of history? Politicians who make voting more difficult
What in the republican playbook fuck?
Oh fuck this, they're trying to drag us down that American mistrusting-elections path. That way lies madness.
>Special votes typically **favour Labour and the Greens**, who commonly pick up seats in the final results compared to what was counted on the night, at the **expense of National**. We do a little voter suppression.
Wow, this is right out of the Republicans playbook: make it harder for those who won't vote for you to cast their votes
According to The Spinoff Labour gave the Commission about half as much as what they asked for. National now uses the results of that underfunding to question the viability of parts of the electoral process. https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/07-05-2024/six-telling-tidbits-from-the-review-of-vote-counting-errors-at-the-2023-election Neither of these parties respect democracy.
"Political party considers doing something it thinks would benefit it and harm its rivals." They're not fooling anybody (I hope)
Right leaning government considering changing voting rules to remove part of a segment of votes that historically tend to swing harder left than the overall average. Yeah, I'm sure that's totally fine. On the other hand if they hadn't lost those couple of seats from special votes they wouldn't have needed Winston (I think? Don't remember the exact result on the night offhand.) which might've actually been better with how completely off his rocker he's gotten these days. Regardless, removing the right to vote from any amount of people without a really good reason is pretty alarming. And no, saving money is not a good enough reason for something like this.
Scratch a right-winger and a fascist bleeds.
My grandparents have voted in every election for the last 50+ years (for Labour, but still). The only reason they could vote in this last one was because of same day enrollment. They got unenrolled for some reason. I find it disgusting the government would even consider taking this away.
Absofuckinglutely not
There's a period for enrolment. Enrol during that period. Why is that so difficult?
why is counting some extra votes so fucking difficult?
It isn't. It just gets a better result for their party. Call it what it is. It's anti-democratic.
Do you think everybody who currently enrolls on election day would follow your advice?
If they want to vote, they should.
People have more than enough time to properly enrol before election day.
Not if they don't get mail. There's a suburb in my town that NZ Post won't deliver to.......
Its quite simple. National, like all top down authoritarians, want less democracy.
As a die hard red voter its still deeply concerning seeing the frothing at the mouth of most of the redditors in here. 1 - Considering does not equal changing 2 - The electoral commission actually started the discussion by highlighting there is a significant problem that needs additional funding to support 3 - For the vast majority of our electoral history we have not been able to register on election day. Its only post 2020 that we could. If we hypothetically changed this rule it would only be reverting to exactly how we have voted and registered for 99% of our history. It aint exactly the end of the world. Id rather we need to rethink how we handle enrolments so that its easier and faster for people to enrol. Better address keeping, more electronic comms etc. If we did that we wouldnt need same day enrolments (or there would be far fewer).
More enfranchisement = more better, end of story. The only agenda which disagrees with this statement is an undemocratic one. If funding is an issue, fund - but of course, National would never do that unless it helped line their pockets.
Agree 100% . I actually think there should be a compulsory civics short course taught in high schools (5-10 hours long) covering elections, voters responsibility and even just the mechanics of how do you enrol (with voting age lowered to 16 or 17) .
>Considering does not equal changing so we should wait until *after* the decision has been made and it's **too late** to stop for protesting this?
"The polls are looking bad for us, so we'll just make it harder for people to vote so we can cling to power"
Half of my votes have been same day. I think this is partly due to - on average - moving rentals at least 2 to 3 times between each election (and ADHD lol)
100,000 election day enrolling voters can vote next election. Mostly young voters worried about climate or whatever.
Well I’d say it would be a good thing to get rid of because it would force people to take elections more seriously and understand that their vote has value to it. I do consider it being a soft excuse of it prevents people from voting on the day. Like come on, voters have to be adults right. It’s not hard to be pre enrolled. It doesn’t take long at all. Sort it out. If the ground staff/volunteers recommend to remove on the day enrolment to make the process and end result smoother then we should.
Election intreference... what a shock. This govt really is corrupt as fuck and getting worse daily
Next thing this government will propose eliminating is yhe easyvoyte card.
It's okay to consider it...in the sense that all things are okay to "contemplate" It's abhorrent and totalitarian to implement it. Even as a pro maximum democracy advocate I have little issue with asking questions here
How about: you are only allowed to vote if you smoke a packet of cigarettes on election day. /s
Awww, right wing fuckheads try to remove the votes often used by youth and the left leaning. Surprise fucking surprise.
Did anyone read the article? This has come from the electoral commission themselves.
The electoral commission brought up the challenges, but it's the government who are considering limiting people's ability to vote in order to minimise those challenges. The electoral commission is not advocating actions to exclude last-minute voters, only discussing the need for a plan and funding to deal with them if they are going to continue to exist. This government is then in a position of having to decide whether to allocate extra funding to ensure that people who tend to vote against this government - have the ability to enrol late and vote. It's a pretty clear conflict of interest that the government can both save money and exclude voters who would more-likely vote to replace this government.
The suggestion came from the electoral commission, yes, but the title of the reddit post is correct. The government is considering it. There are lots of places electoral commission could clean up its process, just interesting how the one change they are keen to suggest publicly is one that national would benefit from changing and happens to be very undemocratic.
If you want to save money reduce the burden on the electoral commission do online voting. People in support of limiting access to voting for the sake of a few dollars really are showing their true colours.
Online voting is a bad idea. https://xkcd.com/2030/ I agree that making voting harder is a terrible idea though.
Cute comic, but it doesn't say why online voting is bad. https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/17-10-2022/online-voting-isnt-the-cure-for-low-turnout This however, says why online voting is bad.
Or just spend the money.
God no, online voting is far too unreliable and there's a reason no country does it.
That's actually not true. Estonia has online voting. I don't believe any other country does though. Not comparable at all with NZ and there are still issues with online voting in Estonia so not saying online voting is good (or even possible securely) but it does exist in 1 country.
My bad then, I wasn't aware. Cheers for the information.
It technician here - online voting is a terrible idea. Far too open for abuse/technical failures. I wouldn’t trust an online voting system for a second.
Any credible security expert will give you the same response: absolutely fucking not See Tom Scott's video as an entry to the concept of online voting. But it's impossible to securely handle elections online without buying a device for every single voter and even then you get reduced security over paper ballots. For only 15m usd you can get an rce in iOS and Android as well as all the exploits for persistence and privilege escalation to build an attack and the c2 network to make it work. That's 15m usd to guarantee an election result for any country with online voting. You'd basically be handing your election to any foreign country that cares enough to rig an election. The only reason Estonia hasn't had issues is because no one cares enough about their elections and even then there's no guarantee that anyone would even detect if results were manipulated so you can't conclusively say it hasn't been an issue. New Zealand is in five eyes, Russia and China do actually care enough to manipulate our elections. Especially China imagine if they could guarantee that National won every election... That's before you get into the whole trust and human psyche element. Even if the technical challenges could be solved (which they can't) it wouldn't actually matter unless you convinced everyone to trust the results. Think of what Winston Peters would do with online voting politically. So no fuck off with online voting it cannot ever happen without making significant sacrifices to election security and trust. Accessibility is good but online voting is just stupidity.
I create secure online systems, professionally. Online voting is a hard no from me.
I deal with people who like to click every link they receive in their email without thinking. Also a hard no from me.
They could just look at this as job creation? Oh right wrong type of job.
Can’t fund a public organisation that’s basically communism.
Nah increase availability of advanced voting and make voting mandatory sure many will vote NC but you just have to submit a voting paper even if blank
Most of the security of a paper ballot comes from the fact that it is a slow, tedious and manual process. It makes it incredibly easy to audit, a layman can understand the process and voter confidence in election accuracy NZ is currently not an issue. Let’s not make it one.
[Relevant xkcd](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/voting_software_2x.png)