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12:06 pm, July 28th, 2025 - 29 comments
Categories: Christopher Luxon, election 2023, human rights, Judith Collins, national, paul goldsmith, same old national -
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This was not on my bingo list although on review the concession is perfectly appropriate and justified.
Newsroom is reporting that Judith Collins’ Bill of Rights advice on the Government’s proposed changes to the Electoral Act removing election day enrollments is that it breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.
From Jonathan Milne at Newsroom:
Electoral law restrictions announced last week are in breach of the Bill of Rights Act, Attorney-General Judith Collins KC says in a report belatedly disclosed to Parliament.
She indicates 100,000-plus people may be directly or indirectly disenfranchised by rules banning enrolment in the final 13 days before an election, she says. Young people, and areas with larger Māori, Asian and Pasifika communities, are likely to be worst affected.
Denying voters the political franchise is a “heavy price” to pay, she says, when there are alternative, less restrictive measures that could have addressed the same problem of speeding up the vote count.
For some strange reason the advice was not included when the bill was tabled. I wonder why?
Again from the article:
Professor Andrew Geddis, at the University of Otago, says the Bill of Rights notice ought to have been attached to the Bill when it was presented, according to the wording of section 7 of the Bill of Rights Act.
This would have allowed ministers to be asked about it, when the proposal first came out.
“However, it doesn’t seem to have been,” he says. “Instead, it quietly went up on the Ministry of Justice website just in time for the weekend.”
In the Bill’s Regulatory Impact Statement the Ministry of Justice did not recommend closing enrolment earlier and said “[i]ts impact on reducing special votes is uncertain, while its impact on democratic participation could be significant”.
Collins’ Bill of Rights advice went even further.
Her notice concluded that the proposal for a 13-day registration deadline appears to constitute an unjustified limit on section 12 of the Bill of Rights Act, which guarantees every New Zealand citizen aged 18 or over “the right to vote in genuine periodic elections of members of the House of Representatives, which elections shall be by equal suffrage and by secret ballot”.
Again from the Newsroom article:
Citing Electoral Commission and Ministry of Justice data, she says about 3,400 people would have their eligibility to vote directly impacted by the law change. These include people returning from overseas after being away for an extended time, and people who become New Zealand residents or are released from prison during the registration period.
But many more will have their right to vote indirectly impacted, by being effectively excluded
from the franchise by the practicalities of the operation of a 13-day pre-election registration deadline.There has been an expectation, since 1993, that electors can register as late as the day before polling day, or more recently, on polling day. Indeed, the trend over time (with accompanying publicity campaigns) has been towards greater flexibility as to when people may register to vote.
In the 2023 general election, the special votes included more than 97,000 people who registered for the first time during the voting period, and nearly 134,000 people who changed electoral districts during the voting period.
“This gives some indication of the number of people who may be affected, and the farther out the registration deadline from polling day, the greater the disenfranchising impact is likely to be.”
Administrative ease should not justify a policy change that will result in significant disenfranchisement. And winding the final date well back from the dates that have operated since 1993 indicates how radical this proposal is.
Christopher Luxon was interviewed this morning on the change. He started off by using another of his talking points, the taking away of the right to vote from prisoners, when he had clearly been asked about the changes to the enrollment period.
He then regurgitated two talking points, that Australia has a 25 day period, and that all that has to happen is for people to get more organised.
Australia does have a longer period. It also has compulsory voting. Its system is entirely different.
And talk about people just needing to get themselves more organised misses the point. This is a fundamental right we are talking about. Collins’ clear advice is that the change breaches the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. Changes to the right to vote should not be justified by administrative ease considerations or so that a result will or may be obtained slightly earlier.
The proposal is appalling and Luxon seems to be indifferent to it. But deliberately skewing the scrum to help your own side is Republican Party quality manipulation of the electoral system.
Thanks for this post. Can PM Luxon join the dot between deputy PM Seymour's revealing "dropkicks" comment, and Attorney General Collins' advice that "young people, and areas with larger Māori, Asian and Pasifika communities, are likely to be worst affected" by a ban on voter enrolment in the final 13 days before an election?
I doubt it.
One possible dropkick who shouldn't get to vote….
Being an ACT mp, he is maybe much more familiar with money, the accumulating of, and keeping in a safe place…
Be nice about Todd Stephenson – he is Parliament's leading issuer of demented and delusional press releases.
Imported culture wars (migrants and bathrooms) – NZF
Imported policy design (Atlas Netowrk) ACT
To the manor born rotten borough entitlement (Tory and GOP) – National
Speeding up the vote count is about the worst reason possible.
It would be perfectly doable to count the party vote portion of the special votes on the night and report them as 'special votes' could even add them to those bar graphs and such the reporters like in a slightly different colour.
That way we would have a very good almost definite idea of how the next Parliament will look, unless its extraordinarily close the very small number of specials that are disqualified just won't really make an difference.
Speeding up the result as an excuse for voter suppression is spurious-particularly given how long MMP negotiations involving Vampire Peters and Atlas Dave took last time.
Vampire Peters I love it!
All that is well and good.
Being the star sign Cynical, this is what I reckon.
It's a Red Herring issue, chucked up by Goldsmith to change the narrative, which it has done.
Also, I can't help but think Collins has released this more for her own benefit as opposed to 'legal advice'
Attempting to subtly undermine the leadership for want of a better word.
Could there be a limit on how long the biggest-polling party has to form a government, before the opportunity falls to the next-biggest poller?
The lions share of the time it took to form a government was not due to the
election process, as I recall.
There should be a point by which the leading party is deemed not to have formed a government.
Unlike some other jurisdictions, there’s no law or convention in New Zealand that guarantees the largest party in Parliament gets the first (or only) opportunity to form a government. For example, in both 1996 and 2017, Labour and National were engaged in negotiations at the same time.
At the end of the day, we don’t elect a government: we elect a Parliament. It’s then up to that Parliament to determine who can command its confidence and therefore govern. The Governor-General’s role is to appoint as Prime Minister the person who can demonstrate they have that support, regardless of which party won the most votes or seats.
Interestingly, in countries like Belgium and the Netherlands, the largest party is usually given the first formal shot at forming a government. While that might offer a sense of order, it can also contribute to delay. Particularly when the largest party’s chances of success are slim, but other parties wait for that attempt to formally fail before negotiating seriously.
We’ve never had a situation where two potential governments both claimed to have the confidence of the House. But it would be a fascinating test of our constitution to see how things would unfold if we ever did.
Whatever it was, it'd probably make Winston keel over from apoplexy.
The longest times to form government that I can recall were 1996 and 2023. The common factor – Winston Peters. Is there maybe a simpler way of reducing the time to form government than denying votes to hundreds of thousands of people.
From my experience of over 20 yrs of managing polling booths, the slow count can be attributed to the proliferation of hand held entertainment devices and that time spent in employment is more about getting money than doing a job.
Oh really. You wouldn't have any links for that ? IE something apart from your RW reckons…
sorry, but wtf? This whole 'I don't like your opinions so you must be RW' thing is getting tedious.
Bruce shared from his experience. Ironically perhaps given what Bruce said, you can't in fact provide a link for lived experience.
FFS.It sure seemed from the RW message book to me. IMO of course.
then explain your thinking. Because atm, it looks like you just decided you didn't like what someone said and instead of debating the politics you decided to marginalise the comment instead.
Myself, I see someone with 20 years experience in running polling booths saying that people's work ethic has changed. I think this is likely true given how much work ethics have changed generally. I don't seen how this is a RW idea. If you think it is, then explain your thinking.
Thanks Weka that was my point. And I believe to defeat the RW we must engage positivly. To build community because division allows the right to win.
Amen Bruce.
To build that community we need to practice patience, grace and a truckload of forgiveness.
And what exactly was your point? IE which part of YOUR perceived…
was about "engage positivily" ? I'm very interested.
"engage positivily" for thee & not for me.
Aye, IFL, Almost a Bill English-ism. Anyway take care,and Keep Left !
: )
I was also a Voting Place Manager, for the first time at the last General Election. I would be pleased to be assured that there has been extensive consultation at our level. 🙂
The taking of Enrolments on the final Saturday proved to be very onerous where I was working. I was in a school hall that day, where all my staff were working their first day. (This should not surprise because this booth was a brand new one for the day)
We were under huge pressure to process numerous Special Votes – we had two desks going almost non-stop all day. To add to that the load of registering people was a huge distraction and meant longer-than-necessary delays for those who were already enrolled.
My solution would be to allow and promote enrolments for the quiet first week that we have Voting Places open. This would give our Electorate Headquarters a head start in validating enrolment information – bearing in mind that in Voting Places, we can't do any of that – we have to give EVERYONE a vote.
Apart from the above, not many would know the huge workload on the final Friday, when all the boxes are opened and counting performed as well. Rather exhausting those two days. We need to concentrate on throughput and quality when processing the numbers we do.
or more staffing and resources?
Yes. I also was a first time voting place manager in an on-the-day-only location with two first time staff. We had three people – manager, one issuing officer for both the general roll and special votes, and a voter assistant (meet and greet).
As a minimum we should have had two issuing officers – one for general roll and one for specials, along with the other two roles.
My role was to oversee voting and counting, ensure procedures were followed, and give the other staff breaks as needed by doing their roles. In reality within minutes of opening I had to jump in and do the general votes to allow the other issuing officer to concentrate on the non-stop specials. We each had one five minute break all day.
We met the unnecessarily tight deadline for counting and returning tallies by continuing to work damn hard to about 10pm.
Our experience may have been unique but I doubt I will take on the manager role next time because of the under-resourcing. I may just apply to do the issuing officer role. That's what I did all day anyway, but the stress would be less.
Special votes are cast over the full voting period, and late enrolments likewise can be made through the period, not just on the last day.
We know there are a significant number of specials, enough to make a 2 seat change in 2023. I would presume most specials would be people voting from outside their electorate / overseas and a smaller proportion of new enrolments.
Is there a breakdown of this split, and are there figures on who the late enrolments voted for?
`I know of several who enrolled on the day, and they wouldn't have been voting for anyone on the left, so am curious on the interpretation that this change would favour right leaning parties. It's certainly restricting democratic principles and opportunity, which is not our tradition in Aotearoa NZ, but suspect it's not necessarily a left / right favouring thing.
https://elections.nz/media-and-news/2023/official-results-for-the-2023-general-election/
It is a known fact that Labour and Greens gain in vote share after specials are counted.
So there's around 500,000 special votes that won't be affected by the change, and which probably account for the Labour and Green gains, and will in future elections.
Would still be informative to get a breakdown of how the pre-enrolled, and late enrolled votes fell. I've got a funny feeling that this government could be shooting itself in the foot here
From the 425,000, there are those who enrolled in the 12 days before election day.
He uses the word modest, in the way Seymour used the term delicious and nutritious for the new food in schools programme.
And until this legislation, that included being able to enrol on election day.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/568356/electoral-amendment-bill-passes-its-first-reading-in-parliament