Pacific Islanders urged to vote even if packs thrown away

Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

Some non-English-speaking voters have mistaken local authority voting packs for a Government notice or a bill and have thrown them away, community leaders and candidates say.

Despite today being the deadline for postal voting, electoral officer Dale Ofsoske says people who do not have their voting packs can still vote by requesting a special vote.

"It must now be a special vote, which can be requested by electors by calling our call centre, or at a council office or service centre," he said.

"We will continue posting out special voting packs today, and possibly by Fastpost tomorrow, but of course the onus will be on the elector to return their vote by noon Saturday."

Mr Ofsoske said papers for 6500 special votes had been sent out by yesterday, amounting to less than 1 per cent of the names on the Auckland Council electoral roll, which was considered normal.

Melino Maka, Tongan Advisory Council chairman, said some Pacific voters had "chucked their voting packs in the rubbish".

"Many Pacific people who don't read English thought it was just another bill they don't want to know about or a Government notice about rates or the GST rise, so they threw their envelopes away."

Mr Maka said meetings had been organised to urge Pacific Islanders to vote, preferably for Pacific candidates, to ensure their interests would be represented on the new council.

"Auckland is now ethnically diverse, and we need a council that is representative of this diversity," he said. "We should be part of the decision-making and not just have decisions being made for us."

Neelam Choudhary, a local board candidate for Howick, says several voters in the ward were saying they wanted to vote but had misplaced their voting packs.

"This is a tough campaign for many candidates, and possibly their toughest for any local body elections. The competition is tight, and a few votes can possibly make a difference," said Ms Choudhary, who is running on the Residents & Ratepayers ticket.

"Our message to the people we are calling is that it is still not too late to vote, even if they didn't have their voting packs."

Several community groups and churches are organising last-minute meetings to gather voting papers from those who have missed the postal deadlines, to be dropped off at the local library on Saturday.

The Ministry of Social Development says that because of the nature of the secret ballot, it did not have information on differences in participation rates among various sectors of the population.

"Nevertheless, results from New Zealand election surveys show non-voters are more likely to be people on lower incomes, younger people and members of Maori or Pacific ethnic groups."