ANALYSIS
This October, New Zealanders will have their say on which candidate and party they want to represent them in Parliament.
Advanced voting for the 2023 general election in New Zealand starts from October 2 and continues to election day on October 14, when voting places will remain open until 7pm.
You need to be enrolled to vote, and to enrol, you need to:
If enrolled by September 10, you’ll be sent an “EasyVote” pack with important information about the candidates in your electorate, how to vote and when you can vote.
If not, you can still enrol on October 14 at any voting place before you vote. If you’re overseas, you must be enrolled by midnight on October 13 to be eligible to vote.
There are 120 seats in Parliament, including 65 general electorate seats and seven Māori electorate seats; Māori can choose to be on the general roll or the Māori roll.
New Zealand has had MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) as its electoral system since 1996, a proportional system where each party’s share of the party vote determines how many seats the party has in Parliament.
You have two votes (though you don’t have to use them both). You can vote for the party you want and for the electorate candidate you want.
Every candidate that wins an electorate becomes the MP for that area. The rest of the seats in Parliament - 48 of them - are then allocated to parties based on their share of the party vote. These seats are taken up by the candidates who are ranked on the party list, which each party releases well before election day.
There’s a catch, though. A party has to win 5 per cent of the party vote to enter Parliament if the party fails to win any electorate seats. This is the dreaded ‘wasted vote’ conundrum - should you bother to vote for a party that doesn’t look like it will win a seat or cross the 5 per cent threshold?
A party that doesn’t win 5 per cent of the vote will still enter Parliament if one of its candidates wins an electorate seat. In this case, the number of seats it has overall will still correspond to its share of the party vote.
This is what happened with the Act Party in 2008, for example, when then-leader Rodney Hide won the seat of Epsom, and the party had five MPs (including four from its party list) because it had won 3.65 per cent of the party vote.
There is also strategic voting: splitting your vote to give the left or right bloc a greater chance of forming a government. This used to happen in the seat of Epsom, for example, when the Act Party’s share of the party vote hovered between 0.5 and 1 per cent in the 2011, 2014 and 2017 elections.
Right-leaning voters in Epsom who wanted a National-led government were encouraged to give their party vote to National and their electorate vote to the Act candidate. This had the potential to increase the size of the right bloc by one MP without hurting National’s share of the party vote.
Similarly, voters who want a Labour-led government but Te Pāti Māori representation at a local level could give an electorate tick to Te Pāti Māori candidate and a party tick to Labour.
Sometimes there is an overhang in Parliament, when a party wins enough electorate seats to have more MPs than its share of the party vote would otherwise deliver. This happened in 2008, for example, when Te Pāti Māori won five of the seven Māori seats but only 2.39 per cent of the party vote. This created an overhang of two MPs, meaning there were 122 MPs in the House of Representatives.
You will be able to vote in a number of voting places around the country. You won’t need ID. You will go to a voting screen so you can mark your voting paper in private, and then slot it into the ballot box.
If you are sight-impaired or have a physical disability that means you can’t mark your voting paper, you can vote via a telephone dictation service. If you’re overseas, you can vote by downloading your voting paper, marking it with your voting ticks and sending it back. Someone can also come to collect your voting paper if you are unable to go to a voting place.
Votes are counted by hand and a preliminary result is released on election night. An official count is then completed, which includes special votes (such as those cast from outside your electorate, including from overseas), and released 20 days after election day.
There are hundreds of voting places open across the country.
Use this map to find out what voting places are open near you today. You can vote in any location, but voting will likely be faster, and you won’t need to cast a special vote if you vote in your electorate or in one of the out-of-electorate polling places that support your electorate.
The party that wins the biggest share of the party vote doesn’t necessarily get to run the country. A party needs to hold a majority of the seats in Parliament to do that, and that has only happened once in our short MMP history - in 2020, when Labour didn’t need the help of any other parties to form a government. (Labour still signed a co-operation agreement with the Green Party.)
Those were unique circumstances - in the middle of a global pandemic - and any party winning at least 50 per cent of the party vote is almost certainly not going to happen this October.
So, after the counting is done, parties will sit down and negotiate as they try to form a governing arrangement that commands a majority of the House of Representatives. That could be a coalition, for example, or a confidence and supply agreement.
Everything is up for negotiation. This essentially means that nothing in any party’s manifesto will necessarily be part of the next government’s agenda. A coalition agreement might even include a policy that no party campaigned on.
This is why party leaders on the election campaign are always asked about their bottom lines and non-negotiables, or what - or who - they’re willing to rule in or rule out.
It is also why there will likely be an element of scare tactics from both sides: Labour will say that a vote for National could see a particular Act policy become reality (which assumes it would be part of a National-Act government’s agenda), and National will likewise say a vote for Labour is a vote for, say, the Greens’ wealth tax (even though Labour has ruled that out).
The reality is that the next government’s agenda will depend on where the chips fall on election day.
A successful governing arrangement between multiple parties needs to be signed off by King Charles III’s representative, Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro, who appoints the government.
What this means is there many ways to consider how to use your voice.
You can vote strategically. You can vote for the party that best represents what you want in the next government. You can vote for a party because you think a particular policy of theirs is most likely to get over the line in post-election negotiations.
You can vote for a party you like that is close to the 5 per cent threshold in the hope that it crosses the line. You can decide not to vote for a party because you fear it might be a wasted vote if that party doesn’t look like it will make the threshold or win an electorate seat.
You can vote as you like. Starting from October 2.
Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery and is a former deputy political editor.
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