Election day has fallen prey to a culture of convenience. It is now election season. Photo / Getty Images
Election day has fallen prey to a culture of convenience. It is now election season. Photo / Getty Images
Opinion by Mike Munro
OPINION
Early voting is clearly here to stay. But is it robbing election day of some of its sense of occasion?
Election day is a momentous event, as it should be. A general election is the centrepiece of our democratic political system, the day we perform our highest civic duty.It’s a day that has special salience, or at least it should have.
This triennial day of reckoning can be a turning point in history, marking perhaps the end, or the beginning, of significant eras of change.
But a single day of reckoning now extends to 13 days, making it a process of doing our democratic duty by drip-feed.
By the time the polls open on Saturday morning, about 1 million New Zealanders — perhaps more — will have already cast their ballots, having taken advantage of voting places being open since October 2.
In 2020, it was close to 2 million, more than two-thirds of all registered voters. A plausible explanation for that is we were still in pandemic mode. Covid-19 protocols had made many people allergic to close contact, so there was understandably a desire to avoid crowds and queues.
Election day has fallen prey to a culture of convenience. It is now election season. Voting has become just another transaction that we can pop out and attend to on any day that suits, during a two-week period.
Some of us hold out. I always wait until election day because going to a neighbourhood voting booth on the actual day and joining a steady stream of citizens who are exercising this most important of democratic rights feels like an essential election-time ritual.
However, the steady stream might now be a trickle, with so many having availed themselves of the early voting option.
Of course, with the passage of time and new technologies, things change, and that includes the conduct of elections.
There’s a wonderful photograph from the 1935 election night, showing a sizeable crowd filling Willis St, Wellington, outside what was then the Evening Post newspaper building. The crowd has gathered to view election results being posted on a billboard overlooking the street.
In the pre-television age, that’s what people did. The shoulder-to-shoulder crowd is mostly men, wearing what look like their derbies or fedoras, but a handful of women, too, are present. Everyone’s eyes are fixed on the results board above the street.
That 1935 photograph underlines the specialness and importance of a general election. The people in that photograph will have voted earlier that day, then rugged up and left their homes in the evening to go into central Wellington and wait in the cool night air to learn the collective will of the people.
Today, though, live television and radio and election websites mean we no longer have to vacate the couch to learn the voters’ verdict.
A single election day was introduced in New Zealand in 1881, but from then until the 1930s, elections were held on weekdays. It wasn’t until 1950 that the law was changed for elections to be held on Saturdays.
But advance voting, provided you had a valid reason, existed in some form from the late 19th century onwards. People who took advantage of it were generally going to be overseas, working, or busy with an event such as a wedding or a sports fixture, when election day rolled around.
And there has always been a provision for special votes to be cast by people whose names are not on the electoral roll at the place they go to cast their vote, or who are in hospital, overseas, or serving a prison term of less than three years.
The practice of putting out the ballot boxes for everyone while campaigning politicians are still in full flight was introduced for the 2011 election. Since then, a reason to vote early hasn’t been required. But being an early bird comes with a degree of risk.
Imagine casting your vote early and then watching on, in the final days of campaigning, as the candidate you supported gets embroiled in a scandal, or makes a monumental blunder that shows they’re unfit for public office. You can’t change your mind. Once your vote is in, it’s headed for the counting room.
That’s the thing with campaigns. They’re never over until they’re over, and sometimes things happen very late in the piece that might influence a voter’s decision.
A curiosity with advance voting is that ballots are being cast with candidates in full voice, a fusillade of advertising happening on mainstream and social media, and election hoardings covering the landscape. There is influence-peddling going on all around the place.
Yet there is a law that says that on election day itself — starting from midnight on election day eve — nobody is allowed to campaign or do anything that influences voters. All election signs and hoardings must be taken down. Publishing anything on mainstream or social media, or a website, that could sway voters risks a fine of up to $20,000.
So it’s tough rules for election day, but no such constraints during early voting.
Making it easier to vote is an admirable objective, and advance voting clearly suits a lot of people.
But there’s work to be done to ensure the rules are consistent throughout the voting period.
Mike Munro is a former chief of staff for Jacinda Ardern and was chief press secretary for Helen Clark.
Election night coverage
A reminder that electoral rules prohibit media coverage of the campaign on Saturday (election day). But join us at nzherald.co.nz from 7pm for extensive live coverage and analysis of the results as they come in, featuring ZB’s Mike Hosking and Heather du Plessis-Allan and our panel of experts including Madison Reidy, Shayne Currie, Claire Trevett, Audrey Young and Barry Soper.
Follow our live coverage from 7pm on election night.
