Voted early the past two elections but I decided that for the first time ever, I’d do it on the day
With COVID in the house a couple of weeks back I put it off. It wasn’t until yesterday I remembered (I felt like we must surely still have a week to go). All the nearby voting places were closed by the time I could go so ended up waiting until today. Then I woke up feeling miserable, so ended up loading up on drugs, N95 mask, drenched in hand sanitiser and managed to make it out of bed and down the road to vote before returning for a nap.
Champion effort
Well done
Ka Pai!
Remember, until 7pm tonight it is a crime to attempt to influence the way a person votes
To be fair, who wants till election day to decide which set of politicians is the least worst.
How long was the wait ?
About 3 min, a couple of people in front of me
No wait at all at my place.
For me it wasn’t too bad. Maybe 5 people in front of me when I got there, with a couple of people to find names and hand out papers. Plus an extra person to handle special votes and on the day enrolments.
That’s pretty fantastic on the last day. Maybe there will be a rush towards 7
We used to have all votes on one day, and now we do half in advance and still seem to have the same number of polling places. I wouldn’t expect many to be super busy, except mall based ones.
I would have also thought the lead up to polls closing would be the quietest time? People who want to vote wouldn’t leave it so late that they risk not being able to vote.
You never know.
Will be real interesting to see once we get digital online voting. Those that just couldn’t be bothered or forgot might change the voting landscape
Digital online voting is just asking for trouble. The requirement to be present in person solves a lot of issues, I can’t think of a way that online voting could work without serious issues.
Technically it could work. But only if it had the right amount of funding, sustained for every election. Which it wouldn’t.
I just can’t imagine a way to make it work that prevented people from selling their votes or being forced by others to vote a certain way. Requiring people to show up at a poll and having no way of knowing who someone voted for is a huge part of what makes elections fair.
If you use ird then what’s the issue?
Let’s say I’m a dick. I run a church, and everyone who comes to my church has to vote FreedomNZ. Now you have a way to verify that they did, by requiring voting to happen at a church session.
Or, let’s say I’m a prisoner in my own home, and my husband is forcing me to vote for a party that intends to repeal laws that protect people in my situation. At a polling booth, you are not allowed to hang around watching someone else vote. You aren’t allowed to take photos, and you can’t know who they voted for once it’s in the ballot box.
With online voting, you lose that protection. You will probably even see a black market for voter codes, or whichever method is used to help people log in.
I’ve never seen a proposal for digital voting that looked better than the current system.
Apart from the security issues, there’s not much evidence that digital voting would mean people are more likely to vote. It’s not voting being hard that puts people off, it’s feeling alienated from the system.
Oh I think you’ll see an increase. It’s not hard. But it’s not hard to go for a walk yet people struggle. Remove obstacles and you’ll get better penetration.
It’s 2023. We can vote online. We don’t need paper votes
