Bruce Bisset: Non-voters holding sway

What to do about the fact that nearly $1m kiwis decided not to vote? Photo / APN

For those of us concerned about democracy, the fact the Grey Party won the election should dominate any review.

Never heard of them? They're the piece of the pie or the bar on the graph shaded grey to denote the non-voters. Light grey for registered but did not vote, dark grey for not registered.

Combined, that's now some 38 per cent of all people of voting age in New Zealand. More than one million of us.

Compare that to the percentage of people of voting age who voted National: 29.7 per cent. Or to the number who voted for all other parties combined: 32 per cent.

In short, we have a problem. It's all very well for the side winning the most votes to presume they have a mandate to govern, but how valid is it when the number of non-voters is the larger group?

Now, I'm not about to defend people for not voting. Democracy is only upheld by exercising the hard-earned right to vote; choosing not to vote is to choose the same "rights" as a slave.

But amongst all the debriefing and inevitable blood-letting around who has won the "battle of the centre" and how the left might grapple this nebulous group back from the camp of the right, the real centre is sitting quietly in our midst, being either ignored or doing the ignoring.

All the main parties put some effort into trying to mobilise this group, but compared to the size of the problem it was various shades of token. National made the least effort, presumably based on the assumption that most non-voters are left-leaning so best left unmotivated.

But an examination of data from the 2008 and 2011 elections indicates this may not be so.

While it's true a quarter of non-voters in 2011 were Maori, 35 per cent unemployed, and 41 per cent young (18-24), and that those three statistics probably generally overlap, other parts of the non-voter puzzle are more intriguing. For example, 35 per cent were Asian, while a massive 60 per cent were recent migrants who had been here less than five years.

And the main reason for not voting was given as "did not feel they belong to NZ" by 45 per cent.

Again, those statistics probably generally overlap.

Given that income and education disparity were, broadly, much as in society in general, then on the evidence both sides of the left/right dialectic should be concerned that they are missing out on votes.

Question is, what to do about it? Some have suggested making voting compulsory, as in Australia, but if you do you'd have to enforce it which most Kiwis would bristle at.

Bear in mind registration is already compulsory, but the lack of enforcement by successive governments has only encouraged this number to grow: almost nine per cent a quarter of a million people are now not enrolled.

Better is the idea of teaching civics studies in schools. Numerous examples exist of children being empowered to uphold democracy through participation in class "elections"; this should be standard practice.

But that won't enfranchise the GenX through Zero currently opting out, apparently because they stupidly believe government has little to do with their lives. Somehow they need to learn a few hard truths around that.

Electronic voting is one possible tech-tool that could help, but the deeper malaise threatens to minimise the gains it might make.

It's in the interest of all political persuasions to put some serious thought into this. Otherwise we will soon reach the point where a majority do not participate at which time our society can rightly be said to have failed.

Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.