Hawke's Bay mayors urge voting reform for local elections

Is postal voting dead, and what's best: Online, polling day, or a mix of both? Photo / NZME

The difference between local government engagement in cities and in smaller towns and rural areas has been highlighted in provisional local elections figures for Hawke's Bay.

In the Wairoa District 51.5 per cent voted – a single decimal point up on the vote at the last election in 2019, the only council area in Hawke's Bay and one of the few throughout New Zealand where more than half of those on the roll voted in the elections which ended on Saturday.

While 48.12 per cent voted in Tararua and 43.89 per cent of those in Central Hawke's Bay with anyone to vote for exercised their right, just 39.54 per cent voted in the Napier City Council elections and 32.94 per cent voted in Hastings.

By comparison, the vote in Tararua in 2019 was 51.44 per cent, in CHB it was 54.56 per cent, in Napier 50.04 per cent and in the wide urban and rural spread of Hastings District it was 43.63 per cent.

Nationwide about 36 per cent of eligible voters ticked the boxes, compared with about 42 per cent in 2019.

In some areas where there were just enough nominations to fill the mayoral, council and other positions at stake in the triennial vote, people did not have any vote, totalling at least 17,000 in the Hastings and CHB districts, but the councils say their statistics are adjusted to take that into account.

Mayors almost universally said both the turnout and central Government's role in local elections is "just not good enough", with Hastings mayor Sandra Hazlehurst, re-elected unopposed, said she welcomes noises about a major review, hoping the Government will fully engage the public.

They're calling for greater education in schools on what council roles are all about, and how it that work which most directly affects everyday lives – things like the Three Waters of drinking, storm and sewerage, roads and parks.

Napier mayor Kirsten Wise said there seemed to be nothing in school curriculums on civic matters, and she took the step of her own volition during the last term to contact schools to offer to speak to students. Some schools accepted.

As for the electoral system, there is support for a mix of online and polling booths, with the postal method seen as on the way out, caused not so much by any decision-making as by the demise of the postal system, which was unable to guarantee delivery of the votes in time if they weren't in the post more than four days before the close.

Wairoa mayor Craig Little is as nostalgic as any in the rural areas about the polling booth days, but says that much as we would like its return, Wairoa could not afford it with all the staffed booths that would be needed, unless the Government assisted and put as much into the local elections as it does into general elections for members of Parliament.

Both Wise and Collis had daughters voting for the first time, having grown up in the digital age, barely knowing what a postal system was and, as Collis said, with some not even having a letterbox.