The enrolment rate for the country’s youngest voters has plummeted to 53 percent, sliding for a sixth consecutive election year.<\/p>\n
The Electoral Commission said it was pushing hard to get numbers up, while politicians have urged young people to get involved.<\/p>\n
In 2011, 70 percent of 18-24 year olds were enrolled to vote by the end of June.<\/p>\n
The number has dropped consistently since then, with 60 percent enrolled in 2023 – while the trend is reversed for those in their mid to late twenties.<\/p>\n
Across all age groups, 89 percent of people are enrolled, which is up on the past two election years.<\/p>\n
At Victoria University in Wellington, students who were enrolled – and those who were not – said they and their peers felt apathetic, ambivalent and nihilistic, and described feeling like their vote would not make any difference.<\/p>\n
“Things are screwed anyway, why try?” one said.<\/p>\n
AUT political scientist and senior lecturer Julienne Molineaux believed compulsory civics education in schools would help – as would lowering the voting age to 16.<\/p>\n
“This sounds counterintuitive to solving youth enrolment problems, but young people are still at school at 16, most of them are,” she said.<\/p>\n
“If schools became a hub of voting enrolment and education and encouragement, we might see more engagement with the political system from young people.”<\/p>\n
Molineaux was not convinced automatic enrolment was the answer, saying the process of enrolment encouraged people to go on and vote.<\/p>\n
“So if it happens automatically, the people who are currently disengaged would still be disengaged. They would just be disengaged and enrolled,” she said.<\/p>\n
Electoral Commission strategic engagement and partnerships director Shane Whitfield said it was doing everything it could to boost enrolment.<\/p>\n
“We’re making sure that we’re available in communities and places and spaces where young people are, so that they can have that opportunity to have their voices heard,” he said.<\/p>\n
That would include social media, radio and television campaigns as well as being present at sports clubs, schools, universities, polytechs, and malls.<\/p>\n
Whitfield hoped the commission would not be alone in their mission.<\/p>\n
“The kaum\u0101tua, the grandparents, the parents, the sports coaches, we think that together we can get a whole bunch more young people involved,” Whitfield said.<\/p>\n
Politicians urge young people to have their say<\/p>\n
Politicians told RNZ they were obligated to encourage people to enrol, but there was also an element of personal responsibility.<\/p>\n
“If you’re unhappy with the system, we need young people to come into politics and to engage with democracy and the political system,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said.<\/p>\n
Labour’s Kieran McAnulty said politicians had to give young people a reason to participate.<\/p>\n
“Certainly that’s our intention with our policy offering and how we’re going to be conducting the campaign,” he said.<\/p>\n
New Zealand First deputy leader Shane Jones said he always checked with young people whether they were enrolled.<\/p>\n
“And often they aren’t, but end of the day, you know, it’s an obligation as well.”<\/p>\n
ACT leader David Seymour said young people had more interest in the future of the country because they would be around for more of it.<\/p>\n
Greens co-leader Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick told young voters the only way to make change was to get involved.<\/p>\n
“Basically, if you don’t do politics, politics is going to do you.”<\/p>\n
Enrolments close at midnight 25 October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The enrolment rate for the country’s youngest voters has plummeted to 53 percent, sliding for a sixth consecutive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-556612","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\/556612","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=556612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}