Online votes way of future
Palmerston North is persevering with the prospect of trialling online voting in the 2019 local body elections but a Massey University academic says the trial would do more harm than good.
Nine councils are waiting to find a provider to run some of next year’s council elections online, and for a law change, before the trials can go ahead.
They see online voting as a way of reversing the trend of falling voter turnout, or at least, making voting more convenient.
But Massey senior lecturer in politics Andy Asquith said it would expose the voting system to greater security risks and not deal with the fundamental reasons why people did not vote.
‘‘The timeframe is too short. The technology is not there,’’ he said. ‘‘The thing everyone is missing is, if people don’t vote now, why would being able to vote on an i-pad make a difference?’’
Asquith said the reason people did not vote was that they did not see the relevance of local government in their lives.
Palmerston North city councillor Aleisha Rutherford is enthusiastic about moving to online voting but was concerned there might not be time to get the trials in place for 2019.
She said she did not believe online voting would have an effect on voter turnout but it was important to offer people a digital choice that was easier for them. Asquith said part of the problem with local government was too much talk about ‘‘ratepayers’’, giving the country’s growing population of renters the idea only property owners mattered.
He said councillors had a responsibility to educate people, including school children, about the importance of local democracy.
Turnout in the 2016 local government elections was 42 per cent, a marginal increase on the 41.4 per cent recorded in 2013, after concerted campaigns supported by Local Government New Zealand to improve awareness.
In Palmerston North in 2016, turnout was 39.1 per cent.
Leader of the nine-council group, Auckland Council general manager of democracy services Marguerite Delbet, said online voting would be more convenient for voters. Postal voting would remain an option.
Asquith said the importance of concentrating on the basics rather than focusing on online voting was illustrated in an Economist Intelligence Unit report in 2017 that identified New Zealand as one of only 19 out of 167 countries that were full democracies.
That was based on measures such as freedom of speech, a free press, an independent judiciary and elections free from interference by foreign powers.
‘‘We have fundamental human rights that we share with only 18 other countries, yet basically could not give a monkey’s.’’
Asquith said e-voting would expose the system to more opportunities for rogue online messaging and actual interference with people’s votes.
Rutherford agreed there needed to be more civics education to help people understand their vote was important and that local democracy was important.
She did not accept there were security risks that could not be managed.
Asquith’s greatest fear was that online voting would be tried, would fail to reverse declining voter turnout, and then chief executives and staff would question whether elected members actually had a legitimate mandate.
That would shift the balance of power further away from the community’s choice of leaders, into the hands of unelected staff.
The Local Electoral Matters Bill, before Parliament’s Justice Committee and due to be reported back by November 9, would have to be passed into law to enable the online voting trial to go ahead.