Photo: NZ ELECTORAL COMMISSION
The Electoral Commission says official election results won't be available any sooner based on changes proposed by the government's Electoral Amendment Bill.
That's despite the alterations primarily being made to improve the timeliness of the official vote count, and the Justice Minister responsible said he's sure New Zealanders can manage getting enrolled early.
The Justice Committee is considering on the bill which makes a suite of changes including ending same-day voter enrolment, banning prisoner voting, changes to treating on Election Day and expanding anonymous political donation limits.
Submissions made on Thursday have been overwhelmingly in opposition.
Chief Electoral Officer Karl Le Quesne fronted the Justice Select Committee on Thursday and explained the "first key step" in the post-election process, which is when the roll closes. Currently that is midnight on Election Day.
After that closes, all the enrolment transactions must be processed.
"It's really critical" Le Quesne said, "because that tells us who's eligible to vote and what votes can be counted."
Normally this would be completed on the fourth day after Election Day, but in 2023 it took the commission twice that time to complete because of the increase in enrolments.
The bill proposes closing the roll on midnight on the 13th day before Election Day, at the beginning of advanced voting. In effect, this would allow that processing to occur before Election Day.
There are a range of other steps in the process after this, in order to ensure all votes are valid. Le Quesne said special votes can't be counted until all those other steps are completed.
"So if you look at the actual counting, it's only about up to four days for the ordinary votes getting a second count, and for the special votes getting a count most of the time is doing all the integrity checks that we're required to do."
He was asked by Labour MP Duncan Webb how many days sooner the official results would be available based on the changes proposed.
"Based on the forecast we've done in the changes that are proposed, we don't think we can deliver it sooner than 20 days."
To clarify, Webb asked "there will be no difference?"
Le Quesne responded "no" because people who update their enrolment after Writ day and before the 13 day close off will still have to do a special vote.
"That's because we're forecasting that there'll still be around 700,000 special votes we've got to run through all these integrity checks."
Webb asked why the changes were being made at all and Le Quesne said "this is not a change that we recommended".
Le Quesne explained if the changes weren't made, the commission would still aim to get all the enrolments processed by the fourth day after the roll closed.
"We would just have to resource up in a much bigger scale than otherwise."
The commission was also asked how many people won't vote or won't be able to vote due to the changes.
Legal, Regulation and Policy manager for the commission Kristina Temel explained the last time the roll closed significantly earlier than it does now was in the 1990s, and in that period there was a "significant increase in the number of disallowed votes as a result".
"If you bring the roll closure date forward, there will be an increase in the number of people who either don't vote or vote and have to have their vote disallowed."
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith told RNZ the final count used to take two weeks, and last election it took three.
"The clear advice we had, was one of the primary reasons for this was due to the massive increase in special votes, and without changes, could take even longer."
Goldsmith said combined with other changes such as the introduction of automatic enrolment, the government's expectation is the Electoral Commission speeds up the vote count process over time.
"If you want to vote, you need to be enrolled. People have about a year to get organised. I have every confidence New Zealanders can manage."
The scrapping of same-day election enrolments reverses a change brought in for the 2020 election, which allowed for enrolments and updating details up to and including on Election Day.
It then goes even further, ensuring voters have to enrol or update their details before advance voting begins. The government is also legislating to require 12 days of advance voting.
The changes are primarily being made to improve the timeliness of the official vote count, and so give voters certainty of a result. When the reforms were announced, Goldsmith said allowing late enrolments - however well intentioned - had placed "too much strain on the system".
"The final vote count used to take two weeks, last election it took three.
"If we leave things as they are, it could well take even longer in future elections. The 20-day timeframe for a final result will likely already be challenging to achieve at the next election without changes."
The Regulatory Impact Statement titled 'Improving the timeliness of the official vote count' stated the Minster for Justice had indicated his expectation the "official results should be available within 14 days after Election Day, as was the case prior to 2020."
Senior Crown Counsel Jason Varuhas said the proposed 13-day registration deadline was "highly likely" to have a "disenfranchising effect".
"The Attorney-General has a statutory obligation under Section 7 of the Bill of Rights Act, to draw Parliament's attention to a bill that appears inconsistent with the Bill of Rights snd on this occasion, the Attorney-General's advice is that various aspects of this bill are inconsistent, appear inconsistent with the Bill of Rights."
"A disenfranchising effect is a particularly serious interference with the right to vote because maintaining the franchise is central to the functioning of a liberal democracy." he said.
Varhaus said it was "wholly uncertain" whether the registration period would actually speed up the vote count and there appeared to be "alerternative ways" to speed it up without disenfranchising anyone.
"It's not clear that it would effectively achieve the goal, which is stated it would achieve." he said.
He said it was important to take into account the voters expectations of the system.
"New Zealanders have been able to register either up until the day before polling day or on polling day for a long time, since at least 1993 - that generates entrenched expectations."
"People will have these set expectations, then there's a very significant deviation, and people are likely to be caught out, they're not going to be able to register, they're going to turn up on polling day, or the day before expecting to be able to register, and they're not going to be able to."
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