Online voting trial for 2019 elections scrapped

Wednesday, 12 December 2018

Voting in local body elections will remain largely postal for 2019.

Nine councils have dropped a joint plan to trial online voting in next year's local body elections.

Their working party said the costs, which had risen to a likely $4.2 million, had scuttled the idea for the time being.

The councils said they would now focus on trying to get legislation changes through and working more widely with the local government sector to trial the move in 2022.

The group had hoped online voting might lift turnout from a nationwide low of 42 per cent in the 2016 local body elections, which were run as a postal vote.

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The working party said it was hugely disappointed about 2019, but would press on.

'With rising postal costs, sections of our communities currently unable to vote privately, and growing disengagement with elections generally, there is simply too much at stake to give up now,' spokeswoman Marguerite Delbet, from Auckland Council, said.

The working party comprises councils from Auckland, Gisborne District, Hamilton City, Marlborough District, Matamata-Piako District, Palmerston North City, Selwyn District, Tauranga City Council and Wellington City.

Each council had so far contributed $15,000 to the project, with an additional $62,608 from Auckland.

Online voting has been provided for in legislation since 2001, but requires specific regulations and has been a stop-start affair over recent years.

The government announced in 2013 that an online trial would be allowed for the 2016 local body elections.

That decision was reversed six months out from the 2016 elections by then-associate local government minister Louise Upston.

'Public confidence in local elections is fundamentally important. Given real concerns about security and vote integrity, it is too early for a trial,' she said in April 2016.

The latest attempt was also racing the clock with amending legislation before a parliamentary select committee but needing to be passed by next March.

The working party believed it had made valuable progress on the idea over the past 18 months.

'Proving that with the right regulatory framework and the financial support of the wider central and local government community, a reliable and secure online voting system can be successfully delivered within the local government context,' it said in a statement.

'The working party had recently selected a provider that satisfied all of the security and delivery requirements,' it said.

Auckland Council, the country's biggest with about one million voters, had been behind online voting.

'There is strong support for online voting with 74 per cent of Aucklanders telling us after the 2016 election that they would prefer to vote online,' Mayor Phil Goff told Stuff in August.