Door-knocking on an Auckland street reveals cracks in new election enrolment rules
Sunday, 26 July 2026
Voters have exactly three months from today to enrol - or update their details - if they want to have a say in the 2026 election.
The coalition Government changed the electoral laws in December to stop people enrolling to vote in the two weeks leading up to election day - a moratorium that also applies to updating your address so you can vote for a local MP.
Around 230,000 voters either enrolled on the day or in the lead-up to the 2023 election and the Electoral Commission has estimated about 55,000 votes could be “disallowed” under the new law, up from 11,000 in 2023.
Labour has built these changes into its election campaign strategy; checking if people are enrolled while door-knocking in more competitive electorates like Northcote.
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“I just know that if I don't knock on these doors, they will probably miss the vote,” Labour’s candidate Shanan Halbert said.
The Sunday Star-Times joined Halbert door-knocking last Friday afternoon - the last day of the school holidays.
But what was supposed to be a walkabout gathering colourful fodder for a story about Labour’s bid to win back the city in which elections are won and lost soon turned into a surprise glimpse into how the new electoral laws may play out in practice.
The door-knocking started near a playground on Taurus Crescent in Beach Haven - a street of mostly newer state houses built under the last Labour government.
The neighbourhood was very quiet, bar a few kids playing on the swings and a curious black cat tailing along the the footpath.
And while hoardings have sprung up around the Northcote electorate, even Halbert conceded it’s early days in the campaign.
“One of the biggest challenges at the moment is that the election isn’t really on their radar.
“These ones that we’re knocking today, there are probably about 40 houses, I think, and only eight of them are enrolled today,” Halbert said.
The hour-long door knock targeted what could be described as an enrolment ‘dead zone’ - a street where only a handful of people are listed on the public electoral roll.
“With the legislation change of not being able to enrol and vote on that fortnight leading up to the election, that's why these areas are kind of critical in terms of where we prioritise now,” Halbert said.
“I rely typically on this community to turn out to vote for me and for Labour, which is also where we lost last time.”
It’s fairly common for MPs to carry enrolment forms as well as their own party flyers while door knocking, to encourage people to get on the roll.
Quite a few of Halbert’s knocks go unanswered - it’s late afternoon on a Friday - so he carefully tucks a flyer into each door before moving on.
Around the corner, Halbert meets a heavily pregnant woman out the front of her house with a baby on her hip.
He introduces himself but she already knows who he is.
“I'm just checking that your enrolment details are up to date?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” she quickly replied but when pressed, she’s less certain.
“How long have you lived here?” Halbert asked.
“Two years now.”
“Have you voted at this address though? You wouldn’t have …”
“That’ll be my other address, but yeah everything’s all up to date.”
“… because you’re not at this address.”
“Oh am I not?”
“Yeah, the Government's changed the law.“
Halbert hands her an enrolment form to fill out and asks how her family’s going.
“It’s all quite stable at the moment but yeah, besides that I don’t know, I’m just trying to juggle three kids.”
She goes on to say her husband recently lost his construction job, though quickly jokes it’s been good to have him home during the school holidays.
Once the form is filled out we continue up the street.
“You can see how people can just go under the radar … that’s the capacity,” Halbert said.
A few houses down, a woman in her 60s opens the door and Halbert asks her how she’s going.
“I’m good, going good,” she replied.
“Now I need your help. I'm just checking that your enrolment details are up to date, so that you can vote in this year's election in November.”
“Oh, I’’ll definitely be voting.”
Halbert can see she is not listed on the public roll, so he hands her an enrolment form and she disappears inside and comes back with a baby in her hip to fill out her details.
“How's it going with the family at the moment?” Halbert asked.
“Pretty good.”
“Bit tough?”
“Yeah, life is well, I mean, I didn't ever think I'd get custody of my moko at 63.”
She tells Halbert her grandchildren are talented artists, and wants to talk to him about the local Mana in Mahi scheme.
The next house down a man opens up but doesn’t want to talk; his daughter is very sick.
Halbert hands him a few enrolment forms - there is no-one on the public roll at this address.
“It'll be good to get some votes and help change the government,” Halbert said.
“Oh, I'm voting for Labour,” the man said before closing the door.
Labour has made its feelings on the electoral changes clear, Damien O’Connor calling them “an evil agenda from the right” designed to “cut out and eliminate” the transient and the poor.
Leader Chris Hipkins ruled out “screaming” about a stolen election after November 7 like US President Donald Trump but is promising to reinstate same-day enrolment.
He said if the number of disallowed votes was out of step with previous elections people would feel “rightly cheated of their right to vote”.
'Any significant changes to the electoral system, you do either want to have broad public support through a referendum, or a good degree of bipartisan support,“ he said.
“I don't think that any individual government or party should gerrymander the electoral system to suit their own preferences.”
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith acknowledged from the outset these restrictions were a significant change, but has argued they’re necessary to ensure a quicker vote count.
While the Electoral Commission - charged with counting the votes - has said this won’t speed things up, Goldsmith would point to official advice given to Labour before it introduced same-day enrolments that warned the additional paperwork could potentially delay the official count.
He told the Sunday Star-Times the Government had introduced tougher enrolment restrictions “for very good reason”.
“Every country around the world has different rules around how soon people need to be enrolled before the election.
“In Australia, it's about 30 days. We're very confident that New Zealanders have the ability and capability to be enrolled before voting starts.”
Goldsmith said the Electoral Commission was well funded and he had every confidence it would encourage people to get on the roll.
Asked if he would be comfortable if it did transpire that fewer people got to vote as a result of his changes, Goldsmith said “no”.
“We've got plenty of time for people to get enrolled … turnout actually fluctuates a lot between elections, and it's the primary role of politicians to persuade people to come out and vote for them.”
Professor and political scientist at Victoria University Jack Vowles said it wasn’t as simple as chalking it all up to “an evil agenda from the right”, and only time would tell if it did lead to fewer votes counted.
“It’s hard not to speculate that one reason why the Government made the changes is that special votes over the last few elections have tended to tilt to the left, up to the point of two seats changing hands, and the idea that it’s these kinds of voters that are driving that and making it a little bit more difficult for them to get on the roll.
“It’s easy to impute political motive on this part, given the Electoral Commission says it won’t really make much of a difference in its ability to deliver a result in the 20-day period,” he said.
“On the other hand, it is consistent with what other countries do, so to cast it as some kind of anti-democratic movement is going a bit far, and to say that a huge number of people may be disenfranchised, [it] is really a bit early to say because the Electoral Commission is doing its best to alert people to the fact they need to get on the roll and get their details changed before October 25.
“We have this idea in New Zealand that there’s a fair degree of consensus about electoral issues but actually there’s a history of governments making marginal changes in one way or another.”
Whether the coalition's changes simply encourage people to enrol earlier or end up shutting more voters out won't be known until election night ‒ but on Taurus Crescent in Beach Haven, the cracks are starting to show.