Government keen on electoral law changes, Chris Hipkins blames Electoral Commission for enrolments debacle

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The Government looks set to overturn a change made in 2020 to allow people to enrol to vote on election day, after a report from the Auditor-General exposed a series of problems with counting votes at the most recent election.

The report noted that none of the problems found with the most recent election would have changed the national result or the result in any individual electorate. The report did not actually recommend changing the Electoral Act to prohibit election-day enrolments, however it found that the 2020 change had put immense pressure on the Electoral Commission because same-day enrolments must be counted as special votes, meaning they take 10 times longer to process than ordinary votes.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said any legislation would be some time away. The Electoral Commission will be presenting its report on the election shortly. That report will be sent to the Justice Committee, which conducts a select committee inquiry after all elections. Goldsmith said he would wait for the committee to deliver its report before introducing any legislation. this means any change is probably a year or more away.

“It’s something we should consider, but we’re going through a process,” Goldsmith said, when asked about whether he would be keen to abolish election day enrolment.

Coalition partner Act, which, along with National, voted against the change when it was progressed by Labour, seems to be keen on reverting to the old system, according to Act’s leader and Associate Justice Minister, David Seymour.

“I have a basic view that there’s a lot of people out in the world who would love to live in a democracy, many of them fighting to do so. I don’t think it’s too hard to ask that people should enrol at least a couple of weeks before the day in order to participate in an election,” he said.

Seymour said that people have rights but also responsibilities when it comes to voting, including enrolling by a a certain deadline.

He said a benefit of an earlier enrolment deadline was being able to scrutinise an electoral roll.

“In the past, you’d actually have people who would go out and check and challenge [the roll]. If people really did live at the address they were enrolled in and often find that there are a lot of people that weren’t, so publishing the role is actually a way of allowing citizens to test and challenge the intent of the election,” Seymour said.

NZ First supported the changes when they were legislated. The party was in coalition with Labour at the time. Since the most recent election, the party has spoken out against the change.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said the changes should be kept, given that 100,000 people took up the opportunity to enrol on election day.

“I think in a fiscally constrained time, and particularly where there are so many issues that are being hotly contested, it’s important that we ensure that everybody has the right to vote and that everybody’s vote gets counted. The Government’s simply saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to cancel 100,000 people’s votes. That’s not democratic’,” he said.

Hipkins said that one of the reasons for enrolling on election day was that the Electoral Commission had “completely failed in their obligation to make sure the electoral roll was up-to-date before the election”.

“They used to go out there and actually make sure people were on the roll before an election. They stopped doing that and as a result, the electoral roll’s woefully inadequate,” Hipkins said.

Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said that any move to restrict election day enrolment “smacks of the politics of Trump’s America”.

“Accessible elections are critical to a functional, inclusive democracy. Any imposed barrier is rightfully open to serious criticism of voter suppression. We’ve seen similar measures disproportionately harm marginalised communities in the likes of the United States,” Swarbrick said.

The Auditor-General found many problems with the Electoral Commission’s handling of the election, including a lack of checks and a hurried approach to checking for dual votes. This could be remedied by increased resourcing of the commission. Funding for the three-year cycle heading to the next election is likely to be included in the Budget at the end of this month.

Thomas Coughlan is Deputy Political Editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.