There has been a jump in voting in some local body electorates over the past day, and turnout in most main centres is on par with last time, but many provincial centres are still lagging.
Electionz chief electoral officer Warwick Lampp says this week has been busier with voting compared to last week. (file photo) Photo: Auckland Council
Almost 90,000 ballot papers were received by Election Services on Thursday, some 30,000 more than the day before, its electoral officer Dale Ofsoske said.
The increase was encouraging but across the 21 council electorates, numbers were still down on 2019 figures on average, he said.
"We're on an average of about 27.6 percent [return rate] for our councils, compared to 31.4 percent on average in 2019 at this same stage."
Postal voting has closed but people are still able to hand-deliver votes to ballot boxes at participating supermarkets and council facilities until voting closes at 12pm on Saturday.
"Historically, we know people generally leave things to the last minute," Ofsoske said.
"With Saturday looming, I think a lot of people are suddenly realising 'we've missed the post' ... and I think what we're going to be seeing now is a lot more people hand-delivering their votes."
Main centres
Electionz chief electoral officer Warwick Lampp told Morning Report this week had been busier compared to last week.
Auckland City Council, the largest council in Aotearoa with 1.41 million voters, was still a touch behind its previous result at 26.6 percent turnout compared with 29.8 percent at the same point in 2019.
Hamilton City Council was at 23.2 percent, compared with 32.3 percent in the last local body elections. "That's a little disappointing," Ofsoske said.
Electionz handles elections for the remainder of the councils.
Its online figures showed Wellington City jumped by nearly 10,000 votes on Thursday to reach 30 percent - up slightly on 2019's same day figure of 28 percent.
Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt were just under 30 percent - down four or five percent on last time.
Christchurch city was four percentage points above its 2019 figure, at 38.31 percent.
Hurunui, north of Christchurch, and Hastings - both of which had uncontested mayoralty candidates this year - are down about 10 percent on last year.
"That's what we would expect when there's no mayoral elections in those areas," Lampp said.
Taupō, Napier, Queenstown and Nelson were all down by five percentage points or more on last election's figures.
Bay of Plenty Regional Council currently had the worst turnout with 19.1 percent, while Kaikōura District Council had the highest, with 51 percent.
The national turnout for the 2019 local elections was 42.2 percent.
Ballot boxes 'going gangbusters' in Wellington
Electionz expected the number of votes across the country to be the same on average as the previous local elections.
Lampp said rethinking the postal voting system to encourage more votes had been a topic of debate recently, but the problem was the legislation was too prescriptive.
"It's time to extend the voting period - three weeks is just too short for the postal system we have"
However, there were ways "to improve the voter experience", he said, suggesting an extension to the voting period and online voting to be added.
"Pretty much all our other elections where there's postal and online component, we look at 28 days. Basically, a month.
"A good example of that is people overseas at the moment; if you're overseas, with the postal system, you've really got no chance to get your votes back in time.
"So we've got to look at ways to make those things easier."
For the first time, some local bodies, like Wellington and Dunedin, are trialling ballot boxes this year alongside the postal voting system.
They expected these would rake in "a late deluge" of votes before the Saturday deadline, Lampp said.
"Some of the councils, like Wellington for example, they're [the ballot boxes] going gangbusters.
"Each council promotes where those are and they are pretty easy to find, they're pretty easy to see ... so we're really happy with how they've gone."