Aren't Can't Don't

Awatea Mita. Photo: Ness Patea

Summer reissue: Denying the incarcerated a vote stamps on human rights

As a formerly incarcerated person, Awatea Mita knows that denying the right to vote violates respect for human dignity, sending the message that absolute rehabilitation is impossible.

By Awatea Mita | 6th January, 2019

Getty Images

Make it 16: a teenager on why we should lower the voting age

Contrary to popular opinion, lots of young people care deeply about politics and are desperate to have their voices heard, writes youth journalist and activist Azaria Howell.

By Azaria Howell | 29th November, 2018

Temperance. Photo: Ness Patea

Don’t: the New Zealand women still not voting, 125 years after suffrage

In the second of two films in our Aren't Can't Don't series, women explain why they don't vote.

By The Spinoff | 29th November, 2018

Maori polling booth at Te Whaiti, Urewera. Image: Alexander Turnbull Library

The day Māori women first got to vote – as told by some creepy guy

125 years after New Zealand women won the right to vote, we take a look at what the first polling day looked like for Māori women... sort of.

By Leonie Hayden | 28th November, 2018

Contributing writer

Golriz Ghahraman says Little’s Bill could end up targeting the wrong people. Photos: RNZ

Green Party calls on government to urgently repeal prisoner voting ban

The support party has called for a change in the law that sees incarcerated people ‘unjustifiably denied the right to vote’.

By Toby Manhire | 28th November, 2018

Editor-at-large

To call ourselves a truly representative democracy, this voting law must change

To call ourselves a truly representative democracy, this voting law must change

The ban on prisoners voting is the worst kind of anti-democratic law – harsh, disproportionate and fundamentally at odds with the idea that human rights belong to all of us

By Tania Sawicki Mead and Ashlesha Sawant | 28th November, 2018

Awatea Mita. Photo: Ness Patea

A society that denies the incarcerated a vote is a society stamping on human rights

As a formerly incarcerated person, I know that denying the right to vote violates respect for human dignity, sending the message that absolute rehabilitation is impossible.

By Awatea Mita | 28th November, 2018

Awatea Mita, in this still from the Spinoff-Storybox series Aren’t Can’t Don’t. Photo: Ness Patea

Can’t: the NZ women still unable to vote, 125 years after suffrage

In the first of two films in our Aren't Can't Don't series, women explain what it meant to be denied an opportunity to vote while imprisoned

By The Spinoff | 28th November, 2018