Election 2026: Coalition’s change to voting rules is radical but Labour helped make it possible – Bryce Edwards
Accusations of “voter suppression” have grown louder since electoral enrolments closed on Sunday – 13 days before polling day. Labour and the Green Party say the Government has made it harder to vote. Ministers insist New Zealanders have had plenty of time to get organised. The politicians competing for our votes also get to change the rules about who can cast them, and few of their decisions matter more.
About 300,000 eligible New Zealanders were still off the roll when it closed, and only about seven in 10 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled. The Electoral Commission expects around 55,000 votes to be thrown out because the voters turn out not to be enrolled. That is roughly 2% of the vote.
We should be careful with these numbers. Not everyone missing from the roll would have voted, and nobody can assume how those who did would have cast their ballots.
The coalition Government’s change goes well beyond what it advertised. Before 2020, people could enrol during advance voting until the day before election day and Labour then extended enrolment through to include election day itself. National, Act and New Zealand First have done much more than reverse Labour’s extension. By closing the roll before advance voting even begins, they have gone from enrolment on polling day to a cut-off a fortnight out, which is a very radical shift.
The Government has a respectable administrative case for the change. The Electoral Commission struggled badly in 2023, and the Auditor-General found that enrolment processing took 11 days instead of the five allocated. The commission has told MPs the earlier deadline should let it finish its work within 20 days rather than up to 23. Ministers still have to explain why saving a few days requires people to lose the chance to vote.
Nor is the new deadline internationally outrageous. Britain requires registration 12 working days before polling, and Australia closed its rolls 26 days before its last federal election. But Australia also has compulsory voting and its electoral commission enrols people directly using data from other government agencies. At its 2025 federal election, 98.2% of eligible Australians were on the roll, compared with about 92% here. New Zealand has copied the cut-off without the automatic enrolment.
Some people are far more likely to fall foul of the deadline than others. A young renter moving between work, study and temporary accommodation is much more likely to be caught out than someone who has owned the same house for 20 years.
The governing parties know that younger and more mobile voters are more exposed to the change, and that special votes have tended to favour the left. They have imposed the restriction for an election in which they are seeking another term. There need not have been a secret meeting about suppressing Opposition votes. Politicians can sincerely believe a policy is in the public interest while finding it particularly convincing because it also suits their electoral interests.
Labour helped make this possible. Its Government introduced election-day enrolment in 2020 by 63 votes to 57, over National’s opposition, with NZ First and the Greens supplying the numbers. Labour had a sound argument about participation, but it went ahead without agreement across the main political divide. It cannot now treat that agreement as indispensable only when it dislikes the changes. NZ First, which helped Labour introduce election-day enrolment, has now helped National remove considerably more.
National has its own words to answer for. In 2021, Judith Collins, then the National leader, complained about Labour’s “willingness to use majority in Parliament to push through changes”. Four years later, National did exactly that. Both blocs now treat a bare majority as enough, and the rules each side favours just happen to help its own voters.
In a close election, that cycle could do real damage. Former Speaker Trevor Mallard has already likened the changes to “the voter suppression you expect from [Donald] Trump or Hungary”. The overhang games being played by Te Pāti Māori and some on the right make it more likely that a narrow result will be blamed on the rules. Chris Hipkins and Chlöe Swarbrick deserve credit for saying they will accept the outcome.
Labour’s promise to restore enrolment access would not fix the way these rules get made. Labour and National should commit now to an independent review of how electoral law is changed. Two proposals would make a good start: require more than a bare parliamentary majority for fundamental changes, as already applies to the voting age and the parliamentary term, and make major new rules wait until the election after next. The review would also need to stop an opposition using those protections to preserve a bad rule indefinitely.
During the leaders’ debates, Christopher Luxon and Hipkins shook hands on meeting within the first 100 days of the next term to look for common ground. They should start with the rulebook that decides who gets a say in choosing between them.
Dr Bryce Edwards is the director of the Democracy Project which scrutinises vested interests in politics. You can read more of his work here.
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