A couple months before every election—general, special, or local government—New Zealand voters are sent a form with all the details the Electoral Commission has for them: Name, address, and phone number, occupation (if stated), whether they have NZ Māori ancestry, which Electoral Roll they’re on (General or Māori, which is why ancestry matters), and what electorate they’re enrolled in. Voters are supposed to check those details and make sure they’re correct. If not, they’re to contact the Electoral Commission using the prepaid envelope, ringing them, or providing updates online. My pack arrived yesterday, but I only remembered to check today; my details were all correct, of course.
It may seem quaint in this digital age to send such a thing by mail, however, it provides the first way to check if someone’s properly enrolled. For example, if someone has moved house since the last election, the envelope would be returned to the Electoral Commission.
The commission will later start running ads (TV, radio, online) telling people that if they haven’t received a pack, they’ll need to update their details or enrol again. Later still, they’ll run ads reminding people the deadline is fast approaching. Anyone who isn’t enrolled on or before Writ Day (this year, Sunday, September 10) will have to cast a special vote, but they can still enrol afterward, and they can enrol and vote during the advance vote period (Oct 2 to 13) and on Election Day. In a typical election, the vast majority of people sort out their voter enrollment well before Election Day.
For a politics nerd like me, elections are like a sport fans’ Super Bowl, MLB World Series, Rugby and FIFA and Cricket World Cups, all rolled into one, including the passions around winning and losing, though, for me it’s more about the process and the mechanics of it all, and all of that is now officially underway with the delivery of our voter enrollment information. And it’s good to know I’m all set and ready to vote. For me, that parts a bit like Christmas, actually.
6 comments:
I was able to read your blog.
This might require another post, but this poli sci major wants o know what happens if the mailing is returned. Is the voter bounced from the rolls? Do they wait to see if they reregister at another address?
@Gary, Thanks!
@Roger I've been thinking much of the day about what sort of specifics I should look into, and I remembered on thing: When someone goes online to change the address for their driver license, they're given a prompt to change their voter address, too, something I know because I found that out when I moved to this house. Not quite what you mentioned, but it's a start.
The NZ solution seems to be, at theoretically, workable within a county, maybe even within a state in the US. But because of the mishmash of state laws, insistence on states' rights, and lesser use of robust computerization in intra- ad interstate transactions, it could not work nationally. Alas.
Part of the reason it works here is that there's one entity that handles nationwide elections as well as the voter rolls. US states have local authorities that are responsible to election and voter roll administration, which adds levels of complexity. It could physically work in the USA, but not politically, even for federal elections, because there's no way "certain people" would ever allow the federal government to administer elections, and that's because of the other reason it's politically impossible: Those same "certain people" don't want free and fair elections in which every eligible person can vote. We don't have any of those obstacles here, partly because New Zealand has been a unitary entity ever since provinces were abolished on 12 October 1875.
Oh, yeah, there's one more thing about our elections that would make the heads of "certain people" explode: We don't show identification to vote; every election we're sent an "Easy Vote" card to make it easier for election workers, but it's not mandatory to bring that.
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