Written By:
- Date published:
7:31 pm, July 25th, 2025 - 21 comments
Categories: act, Dirty Politics, election 2023, greens, labour, national/act government, nz first, paul goldsmith, te pāti māori, us politics, vote smart -
Tags: Dirty tactics, GOP, Republicans, Voter suppression
A few hours ago, it was shared with me1 that Paul Goldsmith’s voting electoral reform affects ~560,000 voters2
Here are the details3:
This means:
i.e. It’s significant voter interference and as I mentioned this morning, Goldsmith’s tactic is the textbook definition of voter suppression.
Remember Goldsmith also defied strong independent Electoral Review recommendations, and implemented prisoner voting bans.
Andrew Riddell also points out something significant:
That’s dialing us back to over 23 years ago i.e. almost a quarter of a century.
How’s that for regression?
The tactics are significant, because like so much of what this right wing Coalition do, they are importing American dirty politics into our culture and constitution.
It also jaw droppingly changes the political scales –
Those early voting numbers exceed ALL of ACT and NZ First’s votes by a ratio of 107%.
In 2023, all special votes4, including enrolments 13 days5 and up to election day, gave Te Pāti Māori two more electorates, the Greens an extra list seat, while National lost two MPs.
i.e. The democratic result spoke for itself.
No wonder they don’t like it.
No matter how they package this, it’s obvious what the true intent is here.
And it should be resisted with force.
Incidentally, the official count in 2023, was completed in 20 days, which is within the statutory timeframe and there are always measures such as mandatory voting rules to explore. According to
Geoff’s preliminary review, the efficiency recommendations included digitisation, more flexibility, and not what has been proposed.
This indicates they know it will be close, so are "tipping the table".
They want mushrooms fed Bull …. and kept in the dark.. not alert informed enrolled voters.
I'm guessing that national are not doing one single thing to get people enrolled in a timely manner?
That's something we can make a lot of noise about through the Select Committee process and through amendments during the passage of the bill.
People have been quite engaged against the Treaty Principles Bill and Regulatory Standards bullshit, this is another engagement builder and really, I can't see this helping National and friends.
Good work Tui.
Cheers.
Great work Tui…the MSM has been scandalously useless on the true effects of this measure, including RadioNZ.
There has to be a massive push from the Left to register people before early voting starts.
Mainstream media is absolutely complicit.
They focus far more on drama than analysis or impacts – which is a danger to our democracy.
I get that media is under-resourced but it also shows a class of "journalists" who do not take pride in their work or care for public interest journalism.
As an aside, I find Newsroom and Spinoff better. RNZ do a little of it, but far too little already – although the direct threats to our public broadcaster and budget cuts don't help (which is the point)
Can't speak for other parties on the Left but voter enrolment is a massive part of Labour campaigning and has been for decades.
If National & Co are concerned that it took 20 days for the official results to be announced and want to speed that up to provide certainty for the Country, maybe they should look at the time taken to actually form a Government.
In 2017 it took Ardern and Peters 26 days to form a Government This election could have gone either way so NZ First would have been doing two sets of negotiations which could have drawn things out.
2020 was pretty simple, Jacinda Ardern announcing a Government after 14 days, before official results were announced.
But in 2023 it took Luxon 41 days to stitch together a government when the only negotiation was between the eventual governing parties.
Really, if National & Co want to talk about the inordinate time taken to form governments they need to look at themselves, not the electoral system.
Maybe a more effective way to speed up government formation, and provide certainty to the Country would be to put a time limit on post election negotiations to form the government, say 30 days from election. Although I can see serious downsides with a better resourced party gaming this to burn off a less resourced opposition.
Excellent work MT.
Democracy getting in the way again and let's see how the media play this one.
Not so well to date. Stuff as usual is talking about lotto and Trump.
And NZ Herald were two siding it as always, and covering their favourite topic: crime
Do we have any idea what Winnie’s position is on voter suppression?
Voters for Winston and NZF won’t be suppressed as much, is my guess.
As I've remarked already, it could end up with his being excluded from governing. If it hadn't been for those special votes in 2023, and the consequent overhang (which meant the RW needed more numbers for an overall majority than Nats+ACT alone could provide), Winnie wouldn't have been in the tent at all.
His popularity has increased since then, he's now banking that it will benefit him.
a law to change when the COC is gone from office
This is why they implemented it – to avoid this scenario if they can. Like GOP do in the US
Plenty in my social media feeds along the lines of "If people don't register at least two weeks before the election, they don't deserve to vote." Problem: who "deserves" to vote is a matter of opinion, and as with everything else, opinions are likely to vary widely.
The idea that voting is a privilege the authorities allow deserving citizens to enjoy should be anathema even to people on the right I would have thought, but for some people tactical advantage eats ethical standards for breakfast.
I not-so-humbly suggest a heuristic for Hon. Paul Goldsmith: if your proposal looks like voter suppression, don't propose it.
Mate this governments policy is written by the angry callers on talkback radio, the tied old taxi drivers and the drunk wanker at the bar!! Maybe national should try getting labour to write their policies instead
100,000 people not being able to vote and all Luxon can say about it is, Oz does not have same day voting.
They are requiring people to be enrolled 12 days before.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/568207/christopher-luxon-defends-voting-changes-after-judith-collins-raises-problems
I read the same article and saw this? Wonder if she had her eyebrow raised?
More teasing out needed on possible angle (there could well be some) as…..