Our Open Letter

Hon Paul Goldsmith
Minister of Justice
Wellington

TBC August 2025

Tēnā koe Minister,

RE: Proposing a Human Rights-Centred approach to improving the speed of the official election count. 

Recent elections have seen longer processing times and a sharp rise in special votes, particularly from people enrolling or updating their details during the voting period. The Government has proposed closing voter enrolments 13 days before an election to address concerns about delays in the official vote count and as a step towards making electoral law and administration more modern, robust, and effective ahead of the 2026 general election. Yet in our view, this change not only undermines New Zealanders’ right to vote — it also ignores the obvious way to modernise and strengthen our electoral system: Automatic Voter Enrolment.

In announcing these changes, you pointed to Australia’s enrolment deadline of 26 days before an election. But this comparison overlooks the fact that Australia has Automatic Voter Enrolment. Despite an earlier cut-off deadline, more than 98% of eligible Australians are on the roll, compared with only 88% in New Zealand. Other democracies, including Canada, Finland, Germany, South Korea, much of the United States, and soon the United Kingdom, have also adopted Automatic Enrolment with success. By international standards, Automatic Enrolment is the benchmark of a modern, robust and effective democracy and New Zealand isn’t meeting it.

Our current enrolment system is time consuming and inefficient. It asks many New Zealanders to spend their time filling out paperwork and finding postboxes to give the Electoral Commission information that it already holds. In the lead-up to 2017 alone, the Commission posted more than 450,000 invitations to New Zealanders to enrol or update their details, most of which went unanswered. With Automatic Enrolment the Electoral Commission would use this information to make everyday New Zealanders’ lives easier. With changes already underway to enable automatic updates, this is the perfect time to modernise the process.

Automatic Voter Enrolment is the rights-affirming alternative: instead of adding barriers, it makes participation easy while creating a modern, robust and efficient electoral system. Now is the perfect time to make this change - and ensure New Zealand has a modern and effective democracy for the future. 

Nga mihi nui, 

Auto Enrol NZ