Election day might still be two weeks away, but voters can start casting their advance ballots from today.
That means it’s time to brush up on how we vote, what happens to those votes, and when we can expect to see the next government.
How to vote
If you want to vote on October 14, you need to be enrolled.
If you were enrolled before September 10, an EasyVote card should be in your letterbox, which will make the process of voting much faster when you do head to the polling booths.
You can still enrol to vote now and can even do so when you turn up to vote on polling day – the process will just take a bit longer.
If you’re enrolled to vote and have a physical disability that means you can’t mark your voting paper without assistance, you can vote by telephone dictation. You need to register for this even if you’ve used it for previous elections.
As you vote, officials will mark the printed roll to indicate that you have done so. These rolls will be compared during the official election count to make sure people have voted only the one time.
Nearly 50 people were referred to police for allegedly voting more than once in 2020.
That’s an offence under the Electoral Act and the penalties can include a prison term or a hefty fine. So, it’s best to channel your enthusiasm for democracy in some other way.
When to vote
If you’re overseas, you can download and complete your voting papers right up until 7pm on election day.
As of March this year, there were around 72,000 people enrolled overseas.
If you’re in Aotearoa and keen to exercise your democratic duty as soon as possible, advance voting has begun.
On election day, polling booths will be open from 9am to 7pm. You can find your nearest voting place here.
What happens to your vote?
All votes in New Zealand’s general election are counted by hand.
There are no vote counting machines, so we get to avoid the accusations of voting machine tampering that happens on TV shows (and in real life in some parts of the world).
Advance votes are counted from 9am on election day, while ordinary votes (which are those cast on election day) are counted after 7pm.
Special votes are counted later, as they can come in up to 10 days after the election date.
Special votes include people who are not on the printed electoral roll at the place they’re voting (if they’re not in their electorate on election day, for example) or those who can’t get to a voting booth.
When can you expect results?
Preliminary election results are released progressively from 7pm on election night.
The Electoral Commission aims to have 50% of the results through by 10pm and 95% of the results available by 11.30pm.
1News will have those live election results from 7pm on TVNZ 1, TVNZ+, 1news.co.nz and across the 1News social channels.
An official count of votes begins the very next day with official results declared 20 days after October 14. This allows for the counting of special votes.
And when will we get the new government?
There is no set date for forming a new government after an election.
Once a result has been declared, the Electoral Commissioner delivers the writ to the Clerk of the House, which effectively certifies the election. The last day for doing this is November 9.
The Governor-General then issues a proclamation summoning Parliament to meet within six weeks.
Usually, parties need to negotiate a coalition deal to form the new government.
Ever since New Zealand started using the MMP system in 1996, new governments have been formed within five weeks of an election. The exception to this was in 1996, when Winston Peters and his New Zealand First party took nine weeks to negotiate a coalition deal.
In 2020, the new Government was formed just two weeks after the election. The relative speed of that was due to Labour winning enough seats to govern alone.
Current polling suggests no party will have enough seats to govern alone after October 14, so coalition negotiations will very likely be taking place.
Exactly which parties will be entering those negotiations remains to be seen.
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