Election resources for different needs

• The Chief Electoral Office is launching new resources this week to make it easier for people with disabilities to vote:
  • The DVD - Get Ready and Vote at the General Election – The Easy Way: People with intellectual disabilities talk about voting is being launched on Thursday 4 September.   The Let’s Get Loud campaign and Yo Voting is Easy! involve musicians, actors, community groups, organisations, individuals, and the orange elections guy to help demonstrate and spread the word that enrolling and voting is easy and relevant to young adults.
  • Another DVD - Enrolling and Voting at the General Election - The Easy Way – in New Zealand Sign Language - is available, and will be launched later this month.
  • Get Ready and Vote: The Easy Guide to Voting and a poster Voting on Election Day is Easy sets out the steps to take in a polling place.
  • This information and resources will be available for viewing, download or ordering on the Elections NZ website once launched.
• Audio files of two key resources in all 20 spoken languages supported by Elections NZ are being posted to it, along with video in New Zealand Sign Language.
• The Chief Electoral Office’s guidance for candidates and political parties is available.  Printed copies of this online guidance is available by emailing chief.electoral.office@justice.govt.nz.
• Presentation and workshop resources from the Elections NZ roadshow are available for use in community education and other settings.
• Once the election date is known look out for a range of information that will be added to Elections NZ with date specific information relating to enrolling, voting, and standing for electors, parties, candidates, financial agents, the media, and other election watchers.

91.81% enrolled

• The Electoral Enrolment Centre is pushing to get as many people enrolled to vote as possible by Writ Day – which is about a month before election day – because it makes it easier for people when they vote.
• Election fieldworkers are on the streets drumming up enrolments from the 258,000 people not yet enrolled.  Our teams are reaching out to people at shopping centres, markets, events, and out in the community getting people to enrol on the spot.  They are supported by advertising activity and other community outreach work by Registrars of Electors.

Reaching younger voters through Bebo social networking site

• For the first time the electoral agencies have enlisted the support of the Bebo social media network site to help reach young New Zealanders to get them enrolled and voting.
• The Let’s Get Loud campaign and Yo Voting is Easy! involve musicians, actors, community groups, organisations, individuals, and Orange Guy to help spread the word that enrolling and voting is easy and relevant to young people as amplified by the agencies' IvoteNZ youth site.
• Bebo figured prominently in the lives of young non-voters from 2005 interviewed at length by researchers in a qualitative study for the Electoral Commission which discerned five segments ranged against political knowledge and motivation to participate.  Feeling "in the dark" about elections which were "not on their wavelength" were common to most non-voters.

Electoral research rewarded

• Andrew Geddis's book, Electoral Law in New Zealand: Practice and Policy, Otago University Press, 2007, has won the associate law professor from Otago University a Wallace Award from the Electoral Commission.  Five awards of highly commended and one award of commended were also announced recently across the academic publishing and student research categories for the 18 month period to 31 October 2007.

Electoral Commission decisions and deliverables

• Electoral Commission decisions relating to alleged breaches of electoral law can now be found in their own subtopic on the Elections NZ website.  Future decisions will be published there, with a consolidated summary of each batch released published under News on the homepage.
• The Electoral Commission statement of intent 2008-2013 was tabled in parliament on 7 August 2008.  Content includes organisational and contextual matters, risk analysis, intervention logic, planned work, and financial forecasts.