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a hand going to a ballot box, one takes a straight path and one a wavy path
Image: Archi Banal

PoliticsOctober 9, 2023

Making elections accessible for everyone

a hand going to a ballot box, one takes a straight path and one a wavy path
Image: Archi Banal

Disabled people are often left off the agenda when it comes to election policy. But whether it’s making candidate events accessible or offering easier ways to vote, making sure everyone is informed and included is key. 

When Neelu Jennings decided to run for parliament she knew she couldn’t do it alone. The disability advocate, who is campaigning for the Green Party in the Hutt South electorate, is legally blind and has no sense of balance following a brain injury. This makes it hard for her to be oriented. “I struggle to find an event unless someone helps me find it,” she says. “The big barrier with accessibility is the amount of energy it takes: instead of going from A to B in a straight line, as a disabled person you go up and around, over and under and through to navigate around barriers.” 

Jennings has an assistant paid for by the Election Access Fund, an initiative that offers funding for electoral candidates with disabilities to assist in campaigning. She’s one of four people to successfully apply for money through the fund, which the Electoral Commission says has given out $45,349.15 during the 2023 election. Jennings’ assistant can do things like call ahead to venues to make sure that a stationary microphone will be available (since Jennings’ visual impairment means she needs to hold her notes close to her face); check the layout of a venue; and organise transport and appointments. 

Neelu Jennings, a brown skinned woman with shoulder length dark hair, reads from a sheet of paper held in her hands while speaking into a microphone
Neelu Jennings talks at a disability even in Kelston (Image: Facebook/supplied)

Nearly one in four people has some form of disability. New Zealand has some benefits for disabilities through MSD and a newly created Ministry for Disabled People. Given the centrality of disability in many lives, it’s worth asking why there is so little disability policy on offer this election. But because disabled people are also voters, it’s worth paying attention as well to how disabled people are included (or not) in campaigning, voting and representing the country. 

As disabled writer Henrietta Bollinger has pointed out, efforts to make politics more accessible haven’t yet brought more disabled people in parliament, even if politicians engage by using wheelchairs for a day and learning New Zealand Sign Language. It’s a frustration to Jennings, who worked with Mojo Mathers, New Zealand’s first profoundly deaf MP. Mathers advocated for the creation of the Election Access Fund. “I don’t know how Mojo [campaigned] before,” Jennings says. “It would have been way too much if I didn’t have that paid role to support me.” 

The Electoral Commission provides a variety of accommodations to make voting accessible for disabled people. There are limitations: for instance, blind and low vision people cannot cast a fully anonymous and independent vote, which advocates have criticised. This election, there’s a full range of election information in alternate formats for every event, including general and Māori voting. (Byelections will also follow the same process.) The Green Party has made its manifesto available in multiple accessible formats too; they’re only party to do so. 

a wheelchair in the spotlight in a row of ordinary chairs
The disabled community wants a seat at the election table (Image: Getty Images)

Telephone dictation voting has been extended to those overseas, and voting services for the Deaf community are now based in pre-existing Deaf community hubs to make it easier to engage. The Deaf voting services are available in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The Electoral Commission says it will update its disability strategy before the 2026 election. 

Enrolling to vote can be a challenge, too. Grace Wang is a support coordinator at Hōhepa Canterbury, an organisation that provides both residential and day programmes for adults with intellectual disabilities in Christchurch. She’s been leading the organisation’s election project. “Getting people enrolled has been a big chunk of the process – we have over 160 people and enrolling to vote online requires passports, drivers licences or RealMe accounts, which is practically difficult for us.” 

Wang has communicated extensively with the electorate office in Banks Peninsula, where most Hōhepa residents live, and it’s setting up a voting location for Hōhepa residents who want to vote somewhere that they know well. “Some people are more independent and want to vote in the community, in a library, and we support that too,” Wang says. 

a room with different accomodation signs on the wall, like sloced captioning and hearing aid loops
Accommodations can make attending election events and voting possible Image: Bianca Cross

Part of the election campaign is also making sure that people know who they’re voting for. Hōhepa hosted several local candidates in September, and Wang helped an advisory group of Hōhepa residents to prepare questions for them to answer. Nathan Beaven, a Hōhepa resident with a long-standing interest in politics (I met him last year at an event for disabled people to talk to Christchurch mayoral candidates) was one of them. 

“I wanted to ask them about youth crime, cost of living and healthcare,” he says. He was also interested in specific questions about disability benefits. Because his family are farmers, Beaven has decided to vote National in his electorate and for Act with his party vote. “I care about farming and getting the country back on track,” he says. 

To Beaven, voting is a responsibility. “We all have to vote and know what we care about.” Throughout Hōhepa’s election engagement, Wang and her team have wanted to emphasise the idea of mana and self-determination for people with disabilities. “We want everyone to know that they have a right to make their voice heard,” she says. 

Wang says that candidates having the opportunity to talk to disabled people is important to make sure that MPs have a picture of concerns for all their constituents. “It’s good for politicians to see what life for people who need support can be like, and they can see the engagement, that they ask good questions. We can see this going further in the future for engagement with local politicians.” 

Other disability organisations have hosted election events for disabled voters. IHC, an advocacy and charity group for people with intellectual disabilities, hosted a forum in Wellington, and Jennings recently attended an event for the disabled community and supporters called Uniting Our Voices in Kelston, a suburb in the Hutt. Making the event accessible required checking the venue had wheelchair access, creating a quiet room for autistic people, ensuring power plugs were accessible for people who have medical devices, and having sign language interpretation and captioning available on videos. But it was totally worthwhile, Jennings says. “Coming together was amazing for our Hutt community.” 

It’s moments like these that make the candidate excited about the possibilities of disability representation throughout the election and parliamentary process. “You campaign as a team, that’s the best part,” she says. “I would encourage anyone who wants to stand for parliament to do it; it really will make our community stronger.”

Keep going!
Will all our votes end up being wasted? (Image: Archi Banal)
Will all our votes end up being wasted? (Image: Archi Banal)

PoliticsOctober 9, 2023

Could NZ really be forced into a second election?

Will all our votes end up being wasted? (Image: Archi Banal)
Will all our votes end up being wasted? (Image: Archi Banal)

It could absolutely happen – but a lot would have to go wrong first, explains Andrew Geddis.

As we move into the final week of the 2023 election campaign, there’s a near-unanimous consensus among those contesting it that the return of New Zealand First to parliament would be A Very Bad Thing. It’s not a total consensus, of course, because one Winston Peters and – if the polls are to be believed – some 5-6% of the population strongly disagree with the suggestion.

However, Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori are very happy to repurpose the “coalition of chaos” line used against them ad infinitum and invite Christopher Luxon to try it on for size, as contrast to their own recent mutually admiring high-fives. National and Act can see their apparently secure march to ministerial office threatening to turn into a victory of the Pyrrhic variety, as the spectre of meshing their policy platforms with that of a fundamentally conservative nationalist party rises from the crypt. And the scattered minor protest parties must resent every percent of support that New Zealand First hauls in as eating the lunch they spent the Covid-years so busily preparing.

The unwelcome guest: NZ First leader Winston Peters (Image: Gabi Lardies)

Yes, New Zealand First really is the dinner guest that no-one wanted to be invited to the table, much less get sat alongside. Except, and this really is very, very crucial, the 5-6% of the population telling pollsters they plan to support the party where it matters most – in the privacy of the polling place.

Which means, under our MMP electoral system rules, New Zealand First looks odds-on to be in the next parliament with anywhere from 6-9 MPs (depending on its final share of the party vote and the total size of the “wasted” vote). And, on current polling at least, there’s no clear avenue for anyone to gain the backing of a parliamentary majority without including those 6-9 MPs.

Which has National’s campaign chair, Chris Bishop, really ramping up the alarm bells about potential consequences. There is, he says, “a very real and growing possibility” that New Zealand First’s presence in parliament “would necessitate, essentially, a second election”.

While we might discount this claim a bit due to its political expediency – “Avoid chaos! Secure your future now!! Vote National (or, at least, Act)!!!” – there nevertheless is a foundation of possibility to it. How, then, might we end up having to revisit the polling places soon after already doing so?

Well, the first scenario Bishop points to is where the “left” bloc (Labour/Greens/Te Pāti Māori) and the “right” bloc (National/Act/New Zealand First) end up in a 60-60 tie. That scenario is the result of our (in hindsight, a bit silly) decision to have a parliament with an even number of seats. And it’s been discussed already, noting that the existence of our “party hopping” laws mean no individual MP could switch sides to create a majority for someone to govern.

If the 2023 election did produce this outcome, would Chris Hipkins and Winston Peters suddenly find that they could work together in government after all? Maybe they could – politics is, after all, the art of the possible. But if not, then literally no-one could form a governing majority and without this, another election is the only circuit breaker available.

Of course, the polls would have to move quite a bit before the end of this week to produce such a result. More likely, at the moment anyway, is a result that sees National and Act with more seats than the left bloc, but not enough to form a parliamentary majority. Meaning, any governing arrangements would have to include New Zealand First in some way, shape or form.

Bishop’s warning is that such arrangements might prove impossible to negotiate: “We are concerned there would be an inability to strike a deal in the interests of the country.” How realistic is this concern, in light of the nine successful post-election governing deals that we’ve seen in our MMP era?

Well, the heat and drama of the election campaign probably isn’t the best time to assess it. So let’s just remind ourselves of how that post-election government deal making takes place.

First of all, any governing arrangements are in the hands of the political parties themselves – there’s only very minimal formal rules about what they have to look like. And there’s a host of possible forms such arrangements can take: coalitions; enhanced agreements on confidence and supply; agreements on confidence and supply; co-operation agreements; etc, etc. Parties can be in government for some purposes, not in it for others, and so on.

The only non-negotiable is that when a vote of no confidence is called in the House, there must be more votes against that motion than are cast for it. And when the government goes asking for money from the House to run the country, there must be more votes in favour of giving that money than are against it. Whatever it takes to get this outcome is up to the various parties to work out.

Second, there isn’t a set time frame in which to make these arrangements. It’s likely that discussions won’t even start properly until after the special votes are counted and the official election result is released in early November. That’s because all the parties want to know exactly where the land lies in terms of their seats in parliament. And also, because everyone is pretty exhausted after the campaign.

And, third, the shape and content of the agreement between the parties is up to them to work out. It may be a minimal “we’ll vote confidence for now, but wait to see what next year’s budget will look like before carrying it on” agreement, as Act has mooted (perhaps even seriously). Or, it may be a quite lengthy and detailed coalition arrangement like New Zealand First has preferred in the past.

Whether the parties will come to any arrangement at all then becomes a matter of political calculus. On the one hand, what policy concessions and ministerial positions are going to be required to get each party to sign on? On the other hand, what are the risks of refusing to offer enough (or, refuse to take what is on offer) in terms of the alternative? Because if Bishop is right and a governing deal can’t be struck, then there’ll be no new government able to take over from the existing “caretaker” one that carries on post-election.

And, with no new government able to take over, at some point the party leaders will have to agree that Chris Hipkins (or whichever Labour MP is acting as caretaker PM) can tell the governor general that a new election is necessary. At which point – sometime early in 2024 – we get to do all this over again. A full rerun with candidates put forward, campaigns run, ballots printed, voting places established just like this year, all at the cost of somewhere north of $150 million.

With, of course, the added factor of the voters being able to decide who really is to blame for making them once again have to think about politics and voting accordingly. Because, that’s the ultimate pressure on the parties to find a way to work together – showing that you are unable to do so risks having the electorate judge you to be unfit to govern at all.

But wait there's more!