Electoral system unfair to Ma¯ ori, says mayoral hopeful

Far North mayoral hopeful Jay Hepi was forced to enrol to vote three times and says the obstacles he faced are a symptom of a system biased against encouraging Ma¯ori voters.

Hepi says his campaign team has encouraged 2000 new voters to sign up for this year’s local body elections but says the system is designed to thwart Ma¯ori wanting to be involved.

The Electoral Commission has now contacted Hepi to apologise for delays in registering his vote — a step he had to take before his nomination as a mayoral candidate was accepted.

It rejected claims there were delays registering other voters, which could potentially shut people out of the postal voting process — which ends August 16 — and force their votes to be cast at one of three council offices across a sprawling district.

It’s an issue which again strikes at Ma¯ori voters, says Hepi, with many financially pressed and struggling to travel lengthy distances to Kaikohe, Kaita¯ia or Kerikeri to cast their votes.

Hepi is standing against a broad field of mayoral candidates, including incumbent John Carter who is looking for a third term.

He is a former gang leader who cites Bishop Brian Tamaki’s Man Up programme as turning his life around.

The strategy for Hepi’s campaign involves energising previously unregistered voters. It aims to overcome obstacles which are said to be behind a perceived low Ma¯ori voter turnout.

“I think it’s a system that has been put in place purposely for Ma¯ori to fail in terms of trying to vote.”

He said a lack of belief in a system which appeared to do little for Ma¯ori, through to a lack of representation and even the economic burden of travelling from rural areas to vote were part of the issue.

Hepi said he first registered to vote on July 18 at the Far North District Council office in Kaikohe, where he lives, and was told it would be processed by the end of the next day. It was the first time he had done so.

When he went to file his nomination papers as a candidate, he was told he couldn’t because he wasn’t registered to vote.

Hepi then filled in another registration form and had a campaign worker drive to Whanga¯rei to lodge it with the Electoral Commission. A week later, he said he was told it had been received but not processed.

Concerned about not yet being registered as a mayoral candidate, Hepi registered again on Monday and provided this journalist with the Privacy Waiver to allow his status as a voter to be tracked. The intervention led to the commission calling Hepi.

Its manager of enrolment and community engagement, Mandy Bohte, said: “There was a delay in processing the form and we apologise . . . for this.”

She said more than 155,000 enrolments and updates had been processed since July including about 6600 in Northland.

Bohte said Hepi’s campaign had delivered 528 enrolment forms to its Whanga¯rei office of which 473 were processed. The other 55 were not filled out correctly so were returned for changes to be made.

She said enrolments submitted before August 16 would qualify for postal voting.