{"id":641111,"date":"2026-10-25T18:46:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-25T18:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/641111\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T18:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T18:46:11","slug":"election-2026-deadline-closes-with-300000-kiwis-still-unenrolled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/641111\/","title":{"rendered":"Election 2026: Deadline closes with 300,000 Kiwis still unenrolled"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the beginning of the campaign, Labour and the Greens have blasted the coalition Government over the changes, framing the amendments as an attempt to suppress votes and disenfranchise Kiwis who plan to vote but are unaware of the new rules.<\/p>\n

Luxon defended the change while campaigning yesterday, arguing people had been given plenty of time to enrol.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve had a year,\u201d Luxon said.<\/p>\n

\"YoungYoung people aged 18-24 made up nearly half of those not enrolled one day before the deadline. Photo \/ Michael Cunningham<\/p>\n

\u201cThe change was announced by the Electoral Commission some time ago. There\u2019s been lots of advance notice. There\u2019s been lots of conversation about it. As I said, there\u2019s been an inordinate amount of advertising. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty simple and easy to do. A democracy\u2019s really special, don\u2019t take it for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest enrolment figures released by the Electoral Commission show the number of eligible voters enrolled rose to 3,744,643 (92.4%) as of October 24 \u2013 an increase of 1136 from the day before<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of the 307,991 eligible voters who remained unenrolled on October 23, almost half, or 43%, were aged 18 to 24.<\/p>\n

While speaking to media in Wellington yesterday, Hipkins said that if enrolment fell short of the numbers recorded in 2023, it would be \u201can indictment on this Government who have deliberately tried to disenfranchise people, particularly those who are less likely to vote for them\u201d.<\/p>\n

He urged people to enrol before midnight \u201cso that they can have their say\u201d.<\/p>\n

At Avondale Markets, Chl\u00f6e Swarbrick said her party had spent the morning reminding people of the midnight enrolment deadline and encouraging them to check their details.<\/p>\n

The Greens co-leader said she found the latest numbers \u201creally concerning\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the most concerning of all is that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon knew that this was what was likely to happen when he made the very intentional changes to suppress voters,\u201d Swarbrick said.<\/p>\n

Swarbrick said the Government received official Cabinet advice acknowledging the systemic barriers to voting and that the changes were likely to disproportionately impact youth, renters, M\u0101ori, Pasifika and migrant communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is an intentional choice that the Government made … If you\u2019re interested in democracy, there should never be any barriers put up in place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGet enrolled\u201d was Act leader David Seymour\u2019s message to voters while campaigning on the North Shore ahead of the deadline.<\/p>\n

\u201cI say to people [who] say it\u2019s all too difficult, \u2018You know what, if you can manage to book your R&V tickets, then you can manage to enrol to vote,\u2019\u201d Seymour said.<\/p>\n

Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered to your inbox every weekday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the beginning of the campaign, Labour and the Greens have blasted the coalition Government over the changes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,10002,18920,18509,45688,264295,5903,81655,266,305,807,7494,14733,111,43,139,1536,69,45641,6100,131,165,1961,314316,5905,4518,102,1530,24750],"class_list":["post-641111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-10002","tag-cast","tag-closes","tag-deadline","tag-elect","tag-election","tag-enrolment","tag-government","tag-have","tag-kiwis","tag-less","tag-midnight","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-passing","tag-still","tag-than","tag-their","tag-this","tag-unenrolled","tag-vote","tag-weeks","tag-with","tag-years","tag-zealanders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641111","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=641111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}