It’s Time to Vote for the Wellington you want

Wellington City voters will be able to cast their votes in the 2007 local authority elections from tomorrow (Friday 21 September).


Voting papers are being mailed to registered voters today. Most Wellingtonians will start receiving their papers tomorrow, with all papers expected to be delivered by Wednesday 26 September. People who have not received their papers by then should contact Wellington City Council's Electoral Officer Ross Bly.

The voting papers will use both the Single Transferable Voting (STV) and the First Past the Post (FPP) voting systems.

The City Council, Community Board and Capital and Coast District Health Board elections will use the STV voting system to elect their members. For these elections, voters are required to rank the candidates they want to vote for in order of preference (ie 1, 2, 3, 4, etc). Greater Wellington Regional Council will be using the FPP system. For the FPP system voters are required to put a tick alongside the candidate/s they wish to vote for.

All the STV elections in the voting papers will be coloured yellow while the FPP election will be grey.

This year, local authorities had the choice of listing their candidates in alphabetical, pseudo-random or fully random order on the voting documents. All three options will be used on the voting documents sent out to Wellington city voters.

Wellington City Council candidates standing for Mayor, Council and community boards will appear in fully random order on the voting documents (ie the order of candidates' names is randomly generated by computer and will be different for each individual voting document).

Greater Wellington Regional Council candidates will be listed in alphabetical order, while the district health board candidates will be listed in pseudo-random order, meaning that a draw determined the order of candidates listed on the voting papers.

"People should read their papers carefully before casting their vote to ensure they are using the right voting method, and voting for the candidates they want to vote for. Candidate profiles will be included with the voting papers so make sure you read these," Mr Bly says.

While 90 percent of eligible Wellington City voters have enrolled to vote and will be receiving their voting papers, approximately 16,000 eligible voters are not enrolled. Of these people, about 8000 are aged 18-24, accounting for the largest portion of unregistered voters.

"Although electoral rolls have now closed, people can still enrol to vote. However, they will need to request special voting papers and should contact me if they want to cast a special vote," Mr Bly says.

"The last date to enrol is Friday 12 October. I would encourage anyone who has not yet registered to do so and cast a special vote. It's their opportunity to have a say on how the city is run over the next three years."

Electoral roll enrolment forms are available from the main Council building, libraries or PostShops. People can also call 0800 ENROL NOW (0800 36 76 56) or visit www.elections.org.nz. People can check and update their enrolment details and enrol online.