Is noise winning by switching off voting altogether?
Negativity, division and noise have one predictable result: fewer people voting.
At the last election, about 110,000 people enrolled or updated their details on election day itself. This year, nobody could.
The coalition closed the rolls 13 days before polling day. Officials warned that an earlier deadline could reduce participation. The prize? Final results about three days sooner.
On deadline day, Chris Hipkins said more than 300,000 eligible New Zealanders were still off the roll. Even the Electoral Commission’s provisional count leaves about 260,000 unenrolled — roughly 40,000 more than at 2023’s rate. Electoral law expert Andrew Geddis sees a “pretty strong correlation” with the law change.
Christopher Luxon rejects any suggestion of disenfranchisement. Bryce Edwards calls it a radical restriction.
Those locked out are mostly the young and the recently moved. That suits the government.
Voter suppression isn’t new. In the United States, just 52.2% of eligible citizens voted in the 2022 midterms. This year, campaigns there have spent a record US$11.6 billion on advertising that breeds cynicism. Former Speaker Trevor Mallard has likened our changes to Trump-style suppression.
New Zealand is now finding out why American turnout is so low.
Since August, National’s billboards and social media ads have claimed the opposition would “triple your taxes”. One National crime video used footage from the coalition’s own term.
The Sensible Sentencing Trust’s billboards put the Labour and Green leaders under “BACKING THE GANGS”, above the Greens’ own slogan. Jordan Williams’ Campaign Company created them. Edwards says they follow the Dirty Politics playbook, though there is no evidence a party commissioned them.
Nicky Hager’s Dirty Work described the script. Now the money is following it.
A full-page Herald ad written by Don Brash, placed by the company behind Reality Check Radio, told voters “DO NOT party vote National!” ACT and New Zealand First approved it. Businessman Harry Mowbray says he paid social media commentators to boost posts. The Electoral Commission is investigating advertising linked to his campaign.
The goal is an overhang. The Herald’s Chris Knox calculates that three extra seats could hand the coalition 62 seats to 61. I warned back in 2013 that politicians abuse the flaws of MMP.
This could be a one-term government. Its best hope is engineering the arithmetic, not winning the argument.
Meanwhile, the trolls insist Opportunity — the media’s darling, pitched as kingmaker — won’t reach 5%.
The alternatives aren’t inspiring. Jack Tame told the two major leaders they needed a caffeine injection. Labour hasn’t tried hard enough. The Greens’ boredom of doom is hardly inviting.
The octopus of media, lobbying and party networks does people’s heads in. Clickbait, trolling and dog-whistles divide, then conquer.
People just want to live free of politics. But rates, taxes, levies, power prices and mortgages keep rising.
So they vote with their wallets. A record 258MW of distributed solar went up last year. They vote with their feet. A net 38,200 citizens left in the year to August.
And they vote by not voting.
Advance voting is up almost a third on 2023. That is no comfort. Noise rallies the already-decided and repels everyone else. It reinforces the status quo.
This is the nastiest campaign of the MMP era. It is no longer about persuasion. It is about suppression and intimidation.
The only way the left can lose this election is by not showing up. The noise is designed to make sure it doesn’t.
