In New Zealand, everyone aged 18 or over who is enrolled can vote in the general election. Each voter gets one ballot paper with two votes on it: a party vote and an electorate vote. The party vote decides how many seats each party gets in Parliament. The electorate vote decides which local person represents your area.
In New Zealand, everyone aged 18 or over who is enrolled can vote in the general election. Each voter gets one ballot paper with two votes on it: a party vote and an electorate vote. The party vote decides how many seats each party gets in Parliament. The electorate vote decides which local person represents your area.
You must be 18 or over and enrolled to vote.
You get one piece of paper with two separate votes on it.
The party vote largely determines each qualifying party's overall share of seats in Parliament.
The electorate vote picks your local MP.
Parliament normally has 120 MPs, and a government needs a majority of them.
To enrol and vote, you must be at least 18, be a New Zealand citizen or resident for electoral purposes, and have lived continuously in New Zealand for at least 12 months at some time in your life. A resident for electoral purposes is someone living in New Zealand lawfully who is not required to leave within a specified time, which is not necessarily the same as the everyday meaning of 'permanent resident'. You also need to be enrolled, which means your name and address are on the official electoral roll. Check your own situation at Vote NZ.
You cannot vote if you are under 18, even by one day. That is one of the reasons school mock elections exist: they let you practise the thinking without changing the real result.
The ballot paper has two columns. On one side is a list of parties. On the other side is a list of the people standing in your electorate, which is the local area you live in.
You tick one circle on each side. You are allowed to tick a party on one side and a person from a different party on the other side. Lots of New Zealanders do exactly that, which is called splitting your vote.
New Zealand uses a voting system called MMP, short for Mixed Member Proportional. Under MMP, the share of party votes a party wins is roughly the share of the 120 seats it gets.
So a party with about 30% of the party vote ends up with about 30% of Parliament, whether or not it wins many local electorates. That is what proportional means: the result in Parliament looks like the result in the country.
Can I vote if I am 17?
No. You must be 18 on or before election day. You can enrol at 17 so you are ready.
Do I have to vote?
Enrolling is required by law for eligible people. Voting itself is not compulsory in New Zealand.
Is my vote secret?
Yes. Nobody can find out how you voted, which is why you fill in the paper behind a screen.