New Zealand: The law is the law on election day | MSN-NZ

Rules preventing people saying how they have voted and taking selfies with their ticked voting paper will be tested as never before on polling day. Publishing anything on election day that could potentially influence another voter is strictly prohibited in New Zealand. People can post on Facebook that they have voted but not who they have voted for because that may influence others. They can take selfies outside the voting place after they have voted but no pictures are allowed in polling booths depicting ticked boxes on the ballot paper. The Electoral Commission says it will investigate complaints. “This is a long-standing law in New Zealand and one most New Zealanders value,” chief electoral officer Robert Peden told NZ Newswire.

New Zealand: Dirty tricks, spies overshadow New Zealand election | Sydney Morning Herald

New Zealand’s election campaign has been bitter and bizarre, unable to shake off the long shadows cast by an internet mogul and a blogger. Opinion polls suggest Prime Minister John Key’s National Party may cling to power after the real polls close on Saturday night, but it will be close. If Mr Key prevails for the centre-right, he will have overcome allegations of government dirty tricks – based on the hacked emails of burly blogger Cameron Slater, aka Whale Oil, that resulted in Justice Minister Judith Collins being forced to resign from cabinet. And a feud with German giant Kim Dotcom meant Mr Key, 53 and a fellow self-made multimillionaire, had to spend much of this week batting away claims that the nation’s GCSB spy agency is engaged in mass surveillance of its citizens. Mr Dotcom, who is fighting extradition to the US to face internet piracy charges, hosted an event in Auckland on Monday featuring WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden (both via video link), as well as US investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald to assert the spying allegations.

New Zealand: A beginner’s guide to New Zealand’s strangest election | Scoop

We’re in the final few days of an election campaign that has had it all – comedy, conspiracy and claims of dirty politics – though none of it has dented New Zealand National Prime Minister John Key’s chances of winning a third term in power. The predictions market puts 80% odds on a National prime minister after this Saturday’s election. For those tuning in late to what has been a dramatic and sometimes bizarre campaign, here’s just a taste of what you’ve missed. A German internet entrepreneur wanted for extradition by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Kim Dotcom, blows NZ$3.5 million to set up a political party with the hope of taking down the Prime Minister. He flies in Pulitzer prize-winner Glenn Greenwald to allege that the NZ government conducts mass cyber-surveillance of its citizens. Unable to stand for office himself as he isn’t a citizen, Dotcom makes a pre-electoral pact with a Maori MP (Hone Harawira, Mana Party) to give his Internet Party something more than a nag’s chance. Meanwhile, an investigative journalist unleashes scandal after scandal by publishing hacked emails from the right-wing blogger behind a site called Whale Oil.

New Zealand: Social media the new campaign trail | Stuff.co.nz

It’s been the campaign of the selfie, the tweet, and the (leaked) email, and new data shows how politicians and political parties rate on their online interactions. Online mentions of both Prime Minister John Key and Labour leader David Cunliffe spiked last night with the TV3 leaders debate, as did comments on minimum wage, tax cuts and income tax. Mentions of Key were higher than comments about Cunliffe during the debate, with a significantly larger number of women than men mentioning Key – although the data does not analyse the sentiment of the comments. The topics discussed during the debate that attracted the most online attention were minimum wage which resonated equally between men and women aged 35-44 and income tax and tax cuts which were mentioned the most by women aged 35-44.

New Zealand: Jailed bush lawyer asks High Court for right to vote | TVNZ

A well-known prison inmate and bush lawyer has appeared in court again, this time on a video screen, to fight for the right to vote in the election next week. From behind bars, Arthur Taylor took his fight to the High Court in Auckland today. It’s been many years since Taylor was allowed a say in who governs New Zealand, a country he says is now on the wrong side of history. “Its now one of the only countries in the Western world that is denying all prisoners the vote,” he told the court via video link as he sat at a desk wearing an orange prison jacket.

New Zealand: Are NZ’s election results hack-proof? | NZCity

New Zealand’s electoral commission is confident no one can hack into its servers and access election results, but there’s still a possibility cyber criminals could target its website. Amid an election campaign that has been dominated by emails of controversial blogger Cameron Slater leaked by a hacker known as Rawshark, it seems no system is impenetrable to rogues with the right skills and network. Hackers in the United States have also previously shown how they can circumvent the security measures on electronic voting machines to change votes. Despite the risk of manipulation, there’s been no reported instances of votes in the US being compromised. New Zealand’s Electoral Commission doesn’t want to disclose how it fights cyber attacks, but says it has a robust system in place for the September 20 election. “The Electoral Commission takes information security and privacy very seriously,” said chief electoral officer Robert Peden.

New Zealand: Vote but resist the urge to selfie | Stuff.co.nz

Think twice before taking an election selfie with your ballot paper – you could be breaking the law. The advance voting period began this week, and already early bird voters are sweeping social media, posting photos of themselves at the polling booth. Among them were Labour leader David Cunliffe, Greens co-leader Metiria Turei, and Internet-Mana benefactor Kim Dotcom. Others, including Labour MP Trevor Mallard, have shared photos of their completed ballot papers, prompting warnings they risked falling foul of the Electoral Act. Internet-Mana leader Laila Harre tweeted yesterday: “Reminder that it’s against electoral law to post pics of your ballot paper.” The Electoral Commission advised candidates and supporters to exercise caution when it came to publishing or distributing material that included a ballot paper. This particularly applied to social media where material could be shared, reshared or reposted on election day.

New Zealand: Electoral commission releases election information | NZ Herald News

Candidate information, party lists and voting booth information for the election on September 20 has landed – and the Expat Party has missed out. The Electoral Commission this afternoon released the official nominations for the election, including 15 registered political parties and 554 candidates to contest the 64 general seats and seven Maori seats. And New Zealand First leader Winston Peters will not be standing in an electorate this election. A notable omission from the list of registered parties is the Expat Party, which wanted to advocate for New Zealanders’ rights, especially in Australia, but failed to register in time.

New Zealand: Electoral Commission conservative in interpretation of law | New Zealand Herald

A public law expert says the Electoral Commission – which has recently cautioned against a song, a fashion exhibition and a rugby billboard – is very risk averse and conservative in its interpretation of electoral law. The commission last week banned the satirical song Planet Key from television and radio broadcasts, and cautioned against a billboard for a rugby game which parodied National’s election hoardings. Now it has taken aim at an exhibition showcasing the late Labour MP Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan’s wardrobe because the opening is due to fall on election day. The Hawke’s Bay Museums Trust has moved the opening to the following weekend after the Electoral Commission advised any reference to the Labour Party would have to be removed on September 20.

New Zealand: Electoral Commission threatens musician with prosecution over ‘Planet Key’ | NZ Herald News

A musician who wrote a satirical song about Prime Minister John Key has been threatened with prosecution if he sells the track on iTunes. But soul and blues man Darren Watson is fighting back and threatening legal action of his own. The Electoral Commission has written to Watson instructing him to stop selling or promoting Planet Key. The music video satirises the Prime Minister and members of the National Government. It features Mr Key playing a stinging blues guitar solo on an endangered Maui’s dolphin while an oil rig explodes in the background. It also depicts Finance Minister Bill English carrying Mr Key’s golf clubs and the Prime Minister playing golf with US President Barack Obama.

New Zealand: Working group nixes drive for online voting in 2016 | ZDNet

A working party has recommended online voting trials be conducted in New Zealand local body elections in 2016, but concluded broad availability is “not feasible” for that election round. The working party, established last September, was a a response to calls from the Justice and Electoral Committee of Parliament, some local authorities, Local Government New Zealand and the New Zealand Society of Local Government Managers to conduct a trial of online voting for local authority elections. “We do not think that broad implementation of an online voting option in the 2016 local elections is feasible.” It was asked to consider the options, costs, and security issues involved in online voting and the feasibility of implementing it for New Zealand’s 2016 local elections. The working group decided a broad roll out is not feasible as the 2016 election will be the first real opportunity to conduct a trial of what could be relatively untested technology.

New Zealand: Thousands missing from electoral roll | Stuff.co.nz

More than 43,000 New Zealanders are missing from the electoral roll just over a month out from the September 20 election, the Electoral Commission says. The commission mailed enrolment update packs to everyone on the electoral roll at the end of June, asking them to check their enrolment details. But tens of thousands had bounced back marked “gone no address”.

New Zealand: Environmental groups set case against Electoral Commission | New Zealand Herald

A group of six New Zealand environmental organisations are set to file documents against the Electoral Commission this afternoon, in what they have described as a freedom of speech test case. The groups — Greenpeace, Forest and Bird, 350 Aotearoa, Generation Zero, Oxfam New Zealand and WWF New Zealand — have brought the case after the Electoral Commission branded material produced by them as an election advertisement. The material in question related to the Climate Voter initiative, launched last month, which aims to get all political parties to address climate change in the run up to September’s General Election. Election advertisements must adhere to a strict set of legal requirements, and restrictions on spending.

New Zealand: The rights and wrongs of MMP | Northern Advocate

MMP has enjoyed more than a two-decade tenure as New Zealand’s voting system. But three months out from the general election, cracks are showing. Cassandra Mason investigates the prides and pitfalls of MMP and whether there’s room for change. New Zealand’s mixed member proportional system (MMP) ousted first past the post (FPP) when it was voted in in 1993. The change answered calls from an increasingly diverse New Zealand that Parliament more closely resemble its population. With September’s election on the horizon, the system’s more controversial characteristics are fuelling debate.

New Zealand: Mixed Member Proportional System: why some want change | Bay of Plenty Times News

MMP has enjoyed more than a two-decade tenure as New Zealand’s voting system. But three months out from the general election, cracks are showing. Cassandra Mason investigates the prides and pitfalls of MMP and whether there’s room for change. New Zealand’s mixed member proportional system (MMP) ousted first past the post (FPP) when it was voted in in 1993. The change answered calls from an increasingly diverse New Zealand that Parliament more closely resemble its population. With September’s election on the horizon, the system’s more controversial characteristics are fuelling debate. Many maintain that MMP is the only truly democratic way to represent a population, while critics say it gives minor parties disproportionate power and influence, putting politics before people. So who’s right?

New Zealand: General election’s first step unfolds | Auckland Now

Staff at an Auckland printing facility are using high tech gear to make sure around 2 million personally addressed letters are ready for posting to registered voters across the country next week. The letters are among 3.2 million asking electors to confirm their details prior to the general election in September. They are being printed at NZ Post’s Highbrook printing facility in Auckland’s eastern suburbs and the remainder are being produced in Christchurch.

New Zealand: Conservative Party may face fight over new logo | New Zealand Herald

Colin Craig’s Conservative Party may be buying into a fight over the proposed alternative logo it is trying to register with the Electoral Commission. The logo which the party wants to have printed on ballot papers is a round blue speech bubble which simply says “Vote” in white writing. However it was been criticised on Twitter over the weekend, including by Labour’s Northcote candidate Richard Hills who said it was confusing. Electoral Commission rules state a logo will not be accepted if is “offensive, indecent, misleading, confusing, referring to an honour or title, or infringing someone else’s intellectual property rights”.

New Zealand: Megaupload’s Dotcom, facing legal threat, launches political party | Reuters

Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom holds court while bathing in the pool of a sprawling New Zealand mansion, fist bumping and chatting with some of the 700 guests gathered to celebrate the political party he launched last month to promote Internet freedom. His latest ultra-encrypted file storage site, Mega, will soon go public after a deal that values it at NZ$210 million ($180 million), and Baboom, an online streaming music service designed to bypass record companies, is nearing its hard launch. In Dotcom’s alternate universe, he is fighting extradition from his adopted country to the United States, where the hulking 40-year-old stands accused of massive copyright infringement related to the Megaupload file sharing site he founded in 2005.

New Zealand: Flag fall: A date for the general election is set | The Economist

When he announced September 20th as the date for the next election, New Zealand’s prime minister, John Key, highlighted the difficulties of forming the next government. The country has a voting system of proportional representation much like Germany’s, and a party leader who may hold the balance of power has a record of prevarication. It could, said Mr Key, be a “very complex environment. And if New Zealand First holds the balance of power, goodness knows how long it will take him to decide what he’s going to do.” The “him” in question is Winston Peters of New Zealand First, who after an election in 1996 took eight weeks to decide between throwing in his lot with the centre-right National Party, Mr Key’s bunch, or with the Labour Party. In the end he chose National, but he has since served as a minister in both National-led and Labour-led governments. Mr Key has been pushing Mr Peters to declare beforehand which side he will back. A government supported by a minor party or parties looks likely this time, too.

New Zealand: Online voting to be trialled in 2016 local elections | NZ Herald News

Online voting is set to be trialled at the 2016 local elections in a bid to boost turnouts. Porirua and Manawatu are likely to be the first areas where people can cast votes electronically, Local Government Minister Chris Tremain said today. The trial would be made possible by the passing of the Electoral Amendment Bill, introduced last week. That would allow voters to enrol online using the government’s RealMe online identity verification service. … Mr Tremain said robust regulations needed to be in place so voters had trust and confidence in the system.

New Zealand: Online system can’t win any votes | Brian Rudman/NZ Herald News

Talk about admitting defeat before the race is over. Instead of trying to inspire voters to get out and do their democratic duty in a few weeks, Local Government Minister Chris Tremain has as good as conceded turn-out is going to be poor. This week, he’s announced a trial of online voting in the 2016 local authority elections as a way “to encourage people to become involved in the democratic process.” Voting via the internet, he says, “will be more convenient and appeal to young voters. It will also make it easier for people with disabilities to vote”. Local Government New Zealand president Lawrence Yule echoed these wishful hopes. But overseas trials don’t appear to back their optimism. In a 2009 poll for the Honolulu Neighbourhood Board, for example, there was an 83 per cent drop in voter participation when Oahu voters had to vote by telephone or internet, rather than cast a paper ballot. But even if internet voting was served up as another option, alongside postal and polling booth voting, and did prove to be a hit with the young, there’s no evidence to suggest your e-vote will be safe and secure as it wings its way from your laptop to Election Central, or that when it arrives, it won’t be prey to malware, or direct external interference.

New Zealand: Online voter enrolment in the pipeline | 3 News

The Greens are celebrating the Government’s decision to allow online voter enrolment before next year’s general election. Justice Minister Judith Collins has announced she’ll be bringing a bill to Parliament amending the Electoral Act. Online enrolment is the most important change to the voting process and when the system has been set up new voters will be able to use it to enrol for the first time. Existing voters will be able to use it to update their details. The Greens have been calling for it since the 2011 election.

New Zealand: Can we trust voting online? | ZDNet

Thankfully, the New Zealand government appears not to be pressing ahead with online voting — at least, for now. An Electoral Amendment Bill was released yesterday, which improves online registration through its RealMe identification service, but nothing appears to have been said about actual online voting itself. Voting online was always seen as one of those inevitable things as part of an e-transition, as it were, to an online world; something that we all saw as “a good thing”. But recent events have made me turn against such “progress”. Having free and fair elections are fundamental to the democratic process, but can we trust such e-ballots?

New Zealand: Impasse over mixed-member proportional representation changes | NZCity News

The Electoral Commission’s recommended changes to MMP must be put to voters in a binding referendum. That’s the only step left now the government has decided they can’t be implemented because there isn’t a consensus among the parties represented in parliament. It’s blatant self-interest on National’s part and there’s no assurance the situation would be any different if Labour and the Greens were running the show. The commission, after a lengthy review and thousands of public submissions, recommended abolishing the single seat “coat tails” rule and lowering the threshold for list seats from five per cent of the party vote to four per cent.

New Zealand: Digital votes ‘less secure than paper’ | NZ Herald News

The Electoral Commission has warned those calling for an electronic voting system that there is, as yet, none which could completely guarantee the security of ballot papers in the way that the paper-only system does. Speaking at the Justice and Electoral Committee yesterday, the Commission was asked about the security of voting information after a series of privacy breaches across the public sector. Chief Electoral officer Rob Peden said there was virtually no risk of privacy breaches relating to people’s voting information because it was not stored electronically in any form. The law required the Electoral Commission to deliver all ballot papers to Parliament’s clerk where they were stored for six months before they had to be destroyed.

New Zealand: Prime Minister quashes Porirua move to trial e-voting | Radio New Zealand

Prime Minister John Key has quashed suggestions that the Porirua City Council be allowed to trial electronic voting for the 2013 local body elections. Mayor Nick Leggett wants the Government to approve new regulations enabling electronic voting to take place. Mr Leggett says Porirua has one of the youngest populations in New Zealand and with only 20% of people under the age of 35 voting in local body elections, electronic voting could help lift voter participation. He says so many everyday interactions are done electronically, voting could be as well.

New Zealand: Voting rights and wrongs | Stuff.co.nz

Compulsory voting has its champions, including Labour MP Clare Curran. Before the 2010 local body elections, while urging people to vote, she declared her support for laws requiring people to vote. “I believe it’s not only the right of every citizen to vote, it’s a responsibility,” she said. Calls for compulsory voting were re-ignited by the lowest voter turnout in more than 100 years (74.21 per cent) at the 2011 general election. Some pundits contrasted this apathy with the extraordinary steps people take in authoritarian countries to win the right to vote, then exercise it. At the first presidential election in Egypt after the 2011 revolution, queues were reported to have stretched up to 3 kilometres.

New Zealand: Electoral Commission MMP report tabled | Stuff.co.nz

Opposition parties say the government should adopt all the Electoral Commission’s recommendations for MMP reform. Labour leader David Shearer said it was “well and truly time to ditch the so-called ‘coat-tails clause’ to avoid stitch-ups like the deal done over the tea cups by John Key and John Banks last election”. The clause wasn’t actually used because ACT did not get enough party votes to bring another MP into parliament, however, the party benefited from the clause in 2008. Shearer said Labour was keen to see the government move quickly on the recommendations. The comments came after the government today tabled the commission’s final report in parliament.

New Zealand: Politicians make MMP threshold picks ahead of New Zealand Electoral Commission review tomorrow | The National Business Review

An Electoral Commission is due to report tomorrow on its MMP review. On TVNZ’s Q+A, Labour’s Lianne Dalziel and Mana leader Hone Harawira predicted the Commission will recommend lowering threshold for getting MPs into parliament from 5% to 4% of the party vote. National has argued it should be kept at 5%. On Q+A, NZ First leader Winston Peters took the same side. Lowering the threshold would create “instability” and “chaos”. Mr Peters said. “If you’re good enough, you should make 5%.” Ms Dalziel argued a 4% threshold that would avoid thousands of wasted votes, as happened to New Zealand First in 1999 (when it got 4.23% of the vote) and 2008 (when it got 4.07%).

New Zealand: The future of Mixed Member Proportional Electoral System | NZ Herald News

Today is the deadline for those who wish to appear in person before the Electoral Commission to send in their submissions on its review of the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) Electoral System. If you do not wish to appear in person, then you can still send in a written submission up until the end of May. The recommendations the Electoral Commission makes to the Government may or may not be adopted, but they will at a minimum ensure a debate on their recommendations. Some of the issues they will consider could have a significant impact on what Parliament and Governments will look like in the future.