Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, there is global economic turmoil, social unrest plagues European societies, and significant wars continue to rage and kill thousands on multiple continents.<\/p>\n
In times like these, having a stable, reliable and functioning democracy is as valuable as it has been in decades.<\/p>\n
What is encouraging is New Zealanders appear to have got the message early.<\/p>\n
The number of early votes cast soared over the half a million mark on Friday, hitting 593,953, according to figures published by the Electoral Commission.<\/p>\n
That compares with 449,706 advance votes being cast at a similar point in the 2023 election.<\/p>\n
Large numbers of advance votes have been a feature of this election so far and will likely climb higher over the weekend, when many people are expected to vote.<\/p>\n
Early voting was higher in 2020 but voting opened earlier that year, and people voted early on account of the pandemic.<\/p>\n
When you read the next edition of this newspaper in a week\u2019s time there will be much to discuss, debate and dissect. The initial results will be in, and the polls suggest it is going to be a tight race to determine the make-up of our next government.<\/p>\n
There was much talk about the earlier deadline to enrol to vote for this election, but that date has now come and gone. What is left for every eligible voter to do is get out, exercise their right, cast their votes and have their voice heard.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s show the world how much we value our small democracy at the bottom of the globe. <\/p>\n
Don\u2019t take the privilege for granted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, there is global economic turmoil, social unrest plagues European societies, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48763,307,13997,36355,14768,26095,2082,19196,194,93351,111,43,139,69,1118,289157,18154,44186,3271,199,1361,223,4468,1961,5905,24688,686,11665,1959],"class_list":["post-647053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-agree","tag-dont","tag-editorial","tag-eligible","tag-every","tag-everyone","tag-for","tag-granted","tag-kiwi","tag-leaning","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-ought","tag-political","tag-privilege","tag-should","tag-take","tag-that","tag-the","tag-thing","tag-this","tag-vote","tag-voting","tag-week","tag-whatever","tag-your"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647053","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=647053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}