Could automatic enrolment solve New Zealand’s voter participation problem? – The Front Page
With just days to go until election day, hundreds of thousands of eligible New Zealanders could find themselves unable to have their say.
The rules governing this year’s election have undergone their biggest overhaul since MMP was introduced.
The Electoral Amendment Act 2025 has restricted the advance voting period to a 12-day window until the day before the election, with voter enrolment closing 13 days out.
Previously, voters could enrol or update their details until the day before election day by casting a special vote, except in 2020 and 2023, when same-day enrolment was allowed.
As at October 27, the enrolment rate sat at 93.2% with 3,775,076 voters enrolled.
It’s below the 94.7% overall seen in 2023.
Estimated population statistics as at June 2025 show there are 4,051,640 eligible voters in New Zealand. This means there are potentially 276,564 people missing out.
Given 72.7% of eligible 18- to 24-year-olds are enrolled, or just over 320,000, it could mean that over half (56.5%) of those missing out are young adults.
University of Otago politics lecturer Dr Bryce Edwards told The Front Page that it’s “regrettable” that the current Government changed the rules so dramatically.
“They didn’t just roll back that ability to enrol, but they took it back two weeks earlier, and that’s quite a radical shift.
“But I’d also point out that I think when the Government changed this, they were dealing with a real problem, which was that the last election there was some stuff-ups and there was, the electoral machinery didn’t cope very well.
“I think the Greens and Labour are quite right to point out what this change has meant and why it is a problem for democracy that the roll gets closed off two weeks early, and to complain about that.
“But they’re being a little bit hypocritical in some of their complaints on this, because they did the same thing when they were in Government. They changed the voting enrolment day as well, and they did it without proper consultation with the opposition, without going out to society and getting their views,” he said.
Australia’s compulsory voting system undeniably affects its voter turnout. Turnout in the 2025 federal election was 90.7%, with enrolment at about 98%.
Comparatively, New Zealand’s turnout rate at the 2023 general election was 78.2% of those enrolled (94.7%). In fact, New Zealand has not exceeded 90% turnout in a general election since 1984 (93.7%), a result of Robert Muldoon’s infamous “schnapps election”.
Since 1924, it’s been compulsory for Australians to vote. Those who don’t fulfil their civic duty face a $20 penalty or a $330 fine if the matter’s referred to court. The hundreds of thousands who didn’t vote in the last election collectively coughed up about A$4.15 million.
But despite the higher turnout, Edwards said there are downsides.
“It’s certainly not a magic bullet. It doesn’t fix it all, and I still think there are a lot of arguments against compulsory voting.
“I think that voting ultimately should be something that’s free rather than something that the state makes you do, and that there are a lot of reasons for people not to vote, particularly if they don’t know who to vote for, they aren’t inspired by any of the options.
“We should take the approach that it’s the responsibility of the politicians, of the political parties to get people to vote, to do it in a positive way that inspires people to vote.”
His main recommendation: automatic enrolment.
“We’re of the kind of age where it is a lot easier for government agencies because they have a lot of information about the public to automatically enrol people.
“And I think that’s probably the big shift that New Zealand now needs to consider and can easily shift to ... It would take away a lot of these issues, and we’d have higher participation; we’d have less angst about this. It would take away some of the fighting over when the close-off is for enrolment,” he said.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
- Low enrolment
- Compulsory voting
- Cross-party protections
- Automatic enrolment.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5pm. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
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