Labour leader Chris Hipkins has promised to reverse the changes to electoral enrolments that would disqualify votes made by people who enrol on election day.<\/p>\n
The justice minister who got the changes passed has dismissed the comments as speculation.<\/p>\n
The coalition government passed legislation in December<\/a> making a range of changes<\/a> to voter enrolments and the way elections are run.<\/p>\n That included putting an end to same-day enrolment, banning prisoners from voting, allowing for larger anonymous political donations, and clarifying the ban on providing food, drink or entertainment at voting places – also known as “treating”.<\/p>\n Speaking to reporters after the post-Cabinet briefing on Monday, Hipkins was fending off questions about whether he might do an electorate deal with the Opportunity Party in Mt Albert, and on Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori not ruling out a one-tick campaign<\/a> for its seats in an effort to intentionally create an overhang.<\/p>\n “We just don’t do electorate deals,” Hipkins said.<\/p>\n “I’m backing all of our candidates to win the seats that they’re campaigning in,” he said. “Ultimately, voters deserve a rigourous contest, they deserve a choice… we’re campaigning for two ticks for Labour and all of the seats across the country.”<\/p>\n He was then asked if MMP was doing what it aimed to – revealing he had voted to keep MMP at the last referendum – and whether Labour would look again at the changes recommended by the independent review of the last election<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Any significant changes to the electoral system, you do either want to have broad public support through a referendum, or a good degree of bipartisan support,” he said.<\/p>\n “I don’t think that any individual government or party should gerrymander the electoral system to suit their own preferences.”<\/p>\n He said the Electoral Commission had not in his view “done well on voter enrolment for several elections now”.<\/p>\n “As a local MP, I’m still dealing with people all of the time who are not on the electoral roll and don’t know that they’re not,” he said, “and that is a failing by the Electoral Commission.”<\/p>\n “People will show up to vote on election day only to find that their vote will not be counted because they’re not on the roll, and that’s new because previously they could show up and vote and fix their enrolment when they showed up to vote.<\/p>\n “They won’t be able to do that anymore, and that is because of this government’s decisions.”<\/p>\n He immediately committed to reversing that. He was pushed on whether changes like that should require a supermajority, or 75 percent of Parliament, to pass.<\/p>\n “Something that potentially disenfranchises tens of thousands of New Zealanders is not the sort of change that an individual government should make – but this government have been quite happy to do that on a number of fronts.”<\/p>\n He said he was “not Donald Trump” and would not claim the election was being stolen if those discounted votes affected the election result.<\/p>\n “But if tens of thousands of people go to cast their votes and have their votes disqualified, it will be an indictment on the track record of this government.”<\/p>\n Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith dismissed Hipkins’ claims as “just speculation”.<\/p>\n “It seems odd for him to suggest his own voters are inherently more disorganised,” he said. “Late enrolments have placed too much strain on the system. The final vote count used to take two weeks, last election it took three. If we left things as they were, it would likely take even longer.”<\/p>\n Goldsmith said the coalition’s changes meant people would need to ensure they enrolled or updated their details by midnight on the Sunday before advance voting began.<\/p>\n “This is a significant, but necessary change, and New Zealanders have plenty of time to get organised and enrolled. Automatic enrolment updates will also now be allowed and postal requirements will be removed, helping to keep people contactable and participating in democracy.<\/p>\n “It will take a concerted effort to turn the ship around and address the trends of later enrolments and more special votes. Unlike Mr Hipkins, I have every confidence in the Electoral Commission to deliver.”<\/p>\n The changes made by the government followed the independent review of the 2023 election<\/a>, but explicitly went against some of the recommendations which urged a voting age of 16, allowing all prisoners to vote and stand for Parliament, freezing the ratio of electorate and list seats, and repealing treating as an offence.<\/p>\n The review included 117 recommendations, one of which was to consider a four-year term.<\/p>\n Both the ACT and NZ First coalition agreements included requirements to get legislation for a four-year term referendum past the first reading, but ACT’s proposal was too complicated<\/a> and the government in February confirmed the plans had been put on ice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour leader Chris Hipkins has promised to reverse the changes to electoral enrolments that would disqualify votes made…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-534952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}