The High Court has ruled prisoners should be allowed to vote in elections, and that the removal of the vote was a breach of their human rights.
I hadn't realised the lack of voting rights for prisoners was such a recent thing. It was enacted by law in 2010. Because it is a law, the court can't correct it, but can signal to a government, via its decision, that the law needs to be changed.
I wasn't uncomfortable with the idea of prisoners not being able to vote. So many of what we take for granted as personal freedoms are removed when you're a prisoner, so it hardly seemed a biggie. There is also the notion of a criminal being able to have some influence over the make-up of New Zealand's government, which as a basic idea doesn't sound appealing.
But the realities of voting, and interest (or disinterest) apply the same way to a large collection of prisoners, as it does with a large collection of free citizens. A lot of people, provided they can be bothered to vote in the first place, will vote superficially. Plenty of people vote for the status quo if things are going fine. I'm sure a lot give a vote to the Greens to give a sense of balance and because trees are good. Yes, I know there's far more to the Green Party than that, but people can be pretty basic.
Could the "prison vote" be a ticket worth capturing for a politician? There is the check and balance in that an outrageously liberal policy towards prisoners would immediately condemn a politician with conservative voters, so I doubt anything too radical could get through. But a politician who addresses why people end up in prisons may get votes, not just with prisoners, but with communities who experience prisons too often.