Enrolment deadline nears with youth enrolments still behind 2023

Voters must be enrolled by midnight on Sunday for their votes to count, and the Electoral Commission needs about 107,000 more people on the roll to match the 2023 rate, Henry Oliver writes in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

Latest figures recorded on 21 October show 92% of the eligible population is enrolled, up from 91.5% the previous Saturday, The Post’s Nick James reports. At the 2023 election the final rate was 94.7% – a gap of 2.65 percentage points, or 107,368 voters. The total number enrolled has already surpassed 2023, RNZ reports, because the population is larger: 3,729,667 against 3,688,292. But the proportion is lower.

Youth enrolment is the weak point. As of Thursday, 68.6% of 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled (302,475 people) against 77.2% at the 2023 election. In some electorates it is far worse: RNZ reports rates of 50% to 60% in many, with Ōtāhuhu the lowest at 50.6% and Banks Peninsula the highest at nearly 94%.

The rule change

In December the Government amended the Electoral Act 1993 to close enrolment 13 days before election day – 25 October this year. Previously voters could enrol or update details up to and including election day.

Justice minister Paul Goldsmith, who led the change through parliament, said late enrolments had put too much strain on the system and lengthened the count, the Herald reports. In 2023, 603,257 special votes were cast (20.9% of the total) with 15,555 disqualified. About 55,000 special votes are projected to be discarded this election.

The political fight

Chris Hipkins told TVNZ’s Q+A he was concerned the commission was not doing enough, and said that when he first became a candidate, commission staff would be out door-knocking alongside him. “They were sort of one street ahead of me, making sure everyone was on the roll.”

The commission confirmed to The Post it stopped door-knocking in 2015. A spokesperson said targeted face-to-face engagement in places people already gather was more cost-effective.

Hipkins said on Q+A he was “really concerned that we’re going to have tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people completely disenfranchised.” Labour’s justice spokesperson Camilla Belich said the commission should do “everything it can,” including door-knocking, and blamed the Government for scrapping same-day enrolment and setting an election date where advance voting opens on a public holiday.

Senior Labour MP Ayesha Verrall told the Herald it was “all starting to add up” – harder enrolment, more people on the dormant roll, fewer booths. Asked if it was deliberate, she said she “wouldn’t know what goes on in Christopher Luxon’s head” but the changes didn’t look like "positive changes for participation in democracy.”

Goldsmith called the criticism “just speculation from Mr Hipkins” and said it seemed odd “to suggest his own voters are inherently more disorganised.” He said advertising was “everywhere you go” – “look at the back of buses.” Luxon said enrolment was “a very easy, straightforward thing to do.”

The commission’s defence

The commission told the Herald it had run more than 2,700 engagement sessions since April 1, including 1,350 focused on youth, visiting 282 schools and tertiary providers and collecting 28,700 enrolment forms. It has introduced mobile enrolment teams, hubs in low-enrolment areas, grants to 36 community groups, and, for the first time, email reminders, alongside restarted data-matching.

It also notes enrolment is ahead of where it was at the same point before the 2023 election, when a late surge lifted the final figure. In 2023, enrolment among 18- to 24-year-olds rose 10 points in the final week.

What next

Chief electoral officer Karl Le Quesne said voters must be enrolled by midnight Sunday, with staff at events and hubs over the weekend and forms arriving by post processed on Tuesday. Advance voting opens Monday.