Planned voting changes could be a civic rights breach

You might recall that in the 2023 election, National and Act ‘lost’ two seats once the special votes were counted post-election day. In other words, the special votes weighed against them. This meant that they could not form a government without NZ First.

Fast-forward to July 2025. National, Act and NZ First have just passed the first reading on the Electoral Amendment Bill, a bill that will almost certainly reduce the number of special votes.

Is this bill an apolitical, justified limitation on the holy grail of democratic rights – the right to vote? Or is it a power-abusing, rights-breaching, Trump-esque attempt to rig voting in their favour?

Let’s look at this a bit more closely.

One proposed amendment is that people must enrol to vote 13 days prior to election day. If they don’t, they cannot cast a valid vote.

Under current law, people can enrol up to and on election day. Votes from people enrolled after ‘writ day’ – approximately two months before the election in 2023 – and election day are so-called special votes (together with, for example, votes cast overseas). In other words, votes from people who enrol in the 12-day period leading up to the election are special votes.

In 2023, 110,000 voters registered on election day and, of the 600,000 special votes cast, 97,000 people enrolled for the first time during the voting period. These votes would be discarded under the proposed law change.

Unsurprisingly, then, the Attorney-General – the Government’s highest legal officer, and senior National Party member, Judith Collins – found in her report that there was a real possibility a large number of people would be caught by this new rule and, as a result, their votes wouldn’t be tallied.

She also noted that the highest courts of the land – here and overseas, especially Australia – have stressed “the fundamentality of the right to vote as lying at the heart of the democratic system”.

The coalition argues we need to restrict who gets to vote to avoid delays in post-election count and the formation of a new government.

There just isn’t the evidence to prove that this amendment is necessary to expedite a verified election result. And as Collins writes, “While acknowledging the public importance of promoting timeliness in the counting of votes … there may be alternative measures for addressing delays in the processing of votes, which are less restrictive of the right to vote, and could therefore possibly be justified.”

It is not even clear that restriction would remedy delays in counting. Those not enrolled before the cut-off can still apply for and cast a special vote. These special votes must still be processed after the election but won’t be included in the ultimate vote count.

Anyway, any detriment associated with any delay is – to me at least – relatively small because we have a longstanding plan b in place, in the form of caretaker governments to ensure the country keeps running while votes are tallied, checked and verified.

Collins also recognises that the restriction on voting registration will effectively discriminate against Māori, Pasifika, Asian and youth voters, who are currently more likely to enrol in the 12 days ahead of the election.

“The Electoral Commission has data that indicates that special votes are more likely to come from areas with larger Māori, Asian and Pasifika communities, and that younger people are more likely to cast special votes. This may indicate that these communities will be more affected by the proposed registration deadline.”

The Government had Collins’ report before it passed the bill in Parliament but chose to ignore the Attorney-General’s recommendations.

Let’s now consider the bill in the light of the current political context.

At least one political poll has the National Party heading towards one term in power and it’s likely that the next election will be tight. Just like in 2023, every vote could tip the balance one way or the other.

Now balance the long-standing trend that special votes favour the left. As leading election law professor Andrew Geddis notes, “Restricting same-day enrolment and voting can … be predicted to reduce the number of votes cast by groups that support left-of-centre parties.”

This Government has enacted some of the most regressive laws breaching the rights of Indigenous peoples we have seen in decades. In a constitution such as ours, there are few legal barriers to it doing so. This bill is likely to disproportionately affect Māori and their right to vote, thereby making it more difficult to defend their rights.

The Act Party has promoted its role as the defender of democracy and the right of one person, one vote. Leader David Seymour said in 2023 that, “Yes, it’s pretty frustrating that it’s taken so long to count the votes, but let’s not lose sight of the real goal here which is free and fair elections that are above any kind of suspicion. That’s absolutely key no matter what the result is.”

Given there is no convincing justification for the bill, as assessed by Collins, the reasoning behind it looks suspicious. It has the whiff of a calculated move by National, Act and NZ First to weigh the next election in their favour, in a way that is reminiscent of Donald Trump’s advocacy for redistricting of congressional boundaries in Texas to favour the Republican Party.

If that is the case, and you be the judge, then this could be a substantial breach of one of the most important of our civic rights and democratic process.