Step-by-step guide to exercising your right to vote

By ANNE BESTON

After all the handshakes, the smiles on the billboards, the shopping mall visits, perhaps the least you can do this Saturday is take five minutes to pop into the nearest polling booth and give the politicians your verdict.

To give you a helping hand, here is the Herald's guide to voting for Election 2002.

If you cannot get to a polling place in your electorate on Saturday, you can cast a vote in advance up until the day before.

For locations and opening times of special voting places, freephone 0800 36 76 56 or visit www.elections.org.nz

If you will be overseas on polling day, you can cast a special declaration vote.

Either download ballot papers from the internet or apply at a New Zealand diplomatic post overseas, but you must be registered on the electoral roll or have been registered on the roll at the last election. Voting closes at 4pm on Friday local time in the country you are in.

You can also cast a special vote if you are not on the electoral roll. Go to a polling place and ask to cast a special declaration vote. You can register for the election up to and including Friday but after that you will have to cast a special vote when you turn up at the voting booth.

This time round, registered voters were sent information packs which also contained an EasyVote card (people who enrolled late may have a letter from the Chief Electoral Officer instead).

The cards, which include your name and address, were an attempt to speed things up on election day by making it easier to find voters on the electoral roll (you can still vote even if you don't have the card).

If you have not been sent an information pack, it is probably because you have not registered in time. Or you might have been sent a letter from the Chief Electoral Officer if you registered late. If so, take that with you when you go to the polling booth.

Polling booths, all 2800 of them, will be open on election day from 9am to 7pm. If you were not sent an information pack with a list of the ones closest to you, phone 0800 36 76 56.

Now to the vote. Under MMP, you get two votes. One is for a party (party vote) and the other for a person standing in your electorate (electorate vote). Your electorate vote should go to the person you most want to represent you in Parliament.

Your party vote should go to the party you want to have the most seats in Parliament.

There are 69 electorate seats (62 general and seven Maori) out of a total of 120 seats in Parliament. The other seats are filled from party lists by list candidates.

The list seats are allocated after the election depending on a party's share (or proportion) of the party vote - that is why the electoral system is called Mixed Member Proportional (MMP).

Parties fill their list seats from party lists drawn up before the election. Voters do not decide who goes on the party list or in what order; that is done by the parties. Generally the higher up the list a candidate is, the better his or her chances of becoming an MP.

So you get two ticks on the ballot paper, one for the party vote and one for the electorate vote. Tick the circle next to the party you want to vote for and the candidate you want to represent you.

To get any seats at all, a party must win at least 5 per cent of the party vote or one electorate seat.

If a party wins more electorate seats than it is entitled to based on its share of party votes, it does not receive any list seats and it keeps the extra seats (known as "overhang" seats). The size of Parliament then increases by that number of seats until the next election.

On election night, after polling booths close, nzherald.co.nz will provide up-to-the-minute coverage as the count gets under way.

TV One, TV3 and National Radio begin their live coverage at 7pm. They plan to stay on air until the result is in.

Official results, including the counting of special votes, are not declared until about two weeks after polling day.

Any other questions about election day, freephone 0800 36 76 56 or visit www.elections.org.nz

Full news coverage:
nzherald.co.nz/election

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