Can Auckland's voting turn out really fall further?
Monday, 23 September 2019
OPINION: Aucklanders have three weeks to defy the gravity of declining voter turnout in the city's local body elections.
Three years ago only 38.5 per cent of the one million Auckland voters decided to have their say in who should run their city, and local community. In 2010 it was 50 per cent.
Given the issues Auckland faces in keeping up with the demands of growth and cleaning up its environment, it is a grim performance.
Whether the ingredients are present in the current election to motivate voters is unclear.
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At a mayoral level the race is patchy with the incumbent Phil Goff promising nothing new, but a continuation of the past progress made by the council he has led.
There is a serious challenger in John Tamihere who is certainly getting attention and offering an alternative in style and policy to the cautious but dependable Goff.
The mayoralty is the headline act in the election, but voters should be thinking about the next two layers, their local ward councillor, and the second-tier local board.
That is, unless you live in the rural wards to the north and south, where astonishingly no one has bothered to challenge the sitting councillors - Greg Sayers in Rodney, and the deputy mayor Bill Cashmore in Franklin.
A no-contest at ward level could take some of the impetus out of voting in those areas.
Are potential voters connecting with the contests?
In the central Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa ward, normally a politically active bunch, there seems unlikely to be a single, all-in candidates meeting where voters can weigh-up the relative merits of their hopefuls.
Remember this is a ward where three-term centre-right councillor Christine Fletcher has become the running-mate for former Labour MP and mayoral hopeful John Tamihere.
It is a ward with a vigorous contest over the future of the public 18-hole golf course at Chamberlain Park, and how long a future the country's prime sporting venue, Eden Park might have.
In another central Isthmus hot-bed, Waitematā and Gulf, a handful of candidates' meetings have drawn only dozens - in total - in a ward battle where for the first time two centre-left candidates are contesting, raising the possibility of a vote split and the seat switching to the centre-right.
Aucklanders are less likely than others to vote, and fewer than half say they know who their local councillor is according to Stuff's Your Place survey.
More than one-in-six Aucklanders said they were unlikely to vote, compared with one-in-10 nationally.
Auckland Council is spending $1.2 million this election trying to encourage candidates to stand, and voters to vote.
It sounds a lot of money but in a city of a million voters, it is little more than a dollar a head.
In 2016 the council missed its goal of achieving a 40 per cent turnout, but claimed victory due to a slight uptick compared with 2013.
That may however have been down to a mayoral battle for a vacant seat, following Len Brown's decision not to run again.
There is also the unknown of postal voting, with the postal system having had three years of further decline since the last election, and a new bunch of young first-time voters, for whom posting an envelope may seem alien.
On the upside, informal youth networks are more active than in the past to get first-time voters.
Ultimately Aucklanders need to care enough about their city to care about who runs it, and that will be a fascinating watch over the next weeks as voting papers are returned.