Electoral Amendment Bill

This has been quite an extensive—well, not as extensive as some of us would have liked in the Committee of the whole House, and that is because there are a number of issues that have been raised with this legislation, the Electoral Amendment Bill. Given that there is concern on this side of the Chamber that this bill does some things that we think are detrimental to our electoral law but also misses out a number of things that we think would make important improvements to our electoral law that the public desperately want Parliament to actually get on with doing, I think a very appropriate name for this legislation would be the “Suppression of Democracy Bill” because it suppresses democracy in a number of different ways. First is the obvious, which is that by removing the legislative requirement that the voter identification card—the EasyVote card is what most people would know it as—in combination with this new requirement, which, again, came out of nowhere, that a person must verbally confirm their identity to the person in the polling booth, those two things combined, is a very, very dangerous situation for a lot of people who will find it more difficult to identify themselves when they get to the polling booth.

It is known around the world that voter identification cards like the EasyVote card that we have in New Zealand are a facilitator of higher voter turnout. They know that in Canada, research has been produced in recent days to counter its Conservative Government’s argument that the use of voter identification cards in Canada should also be suppressed and that changes should be made over there as well to the way a voter identifies themselves when they present themselves at the polling booth. Frankly, the legislation that the Canadian Conservative Party is proposing is considerably worse than what the National Government is proposing here in New Zealand. What I think the National Government has done is it has seen what the Government is doing in Canada and it has tried to do some catch-up with some of the changes that have been made as this legislation has been making its way through Parliament. There has been much more public outcry in Canada about what its Conservative Government is doing, and, in fact, an extensive filibuster by Opposition members in Canada, where they have a system that allows for much more extensive filibusters than what we can do here in New Zealand, such is the concern about the detrimental impacts on democracy and voter turnout of the legislation that the Canadians are promoting.

I think what the National Government has done here in New Zealand is it has looked at that and thought: “You know what? There are a few ideas that we can take out of that and there are some ways that we can use the changes that are being made to electoral law here in New Zealand to suppress turnout and suppress democracy.” We know—it is just a known fact—that all around the world the progressive parties, the parties of the left, do better when there is a higher turnout, and the conservative parties do better when there is a lower turnout, when more people feel they cannot go to the polling booth or they do not want to participate in the election or when they show up at the polling booth some reason is found that their vote does not count. This is always done in the name of eliminating electoral fraud. Every time some party uses the excuse that by opening up the electoral process so that more people can participate, it potentially opens up opportunities for electoral fraud, the argument that is used against that is that electoral fraud is almost non-existent. That is certainly the case here in New Zealand. There is no documented evidence of electoral fraud occurring at the polling booth. When somebody shows up with their voter identification card, or without it, there is absolutely no example from any member of the Government, or any example that I have been able to find in researching this legislation, of electoral fraud at the polling booth occurring in New Zealand. So what is the problem? What exactly is the problem that the Government thinks it is solving by removing the legislative requirement for the EasyVote card to exist and by requiring voters to identify themselves verbally?

That may not seem like such a big deal, but we know that one of the most marginalised groups in New Zealand, one of the demographics that is most likely not to engage in our electoral processes, is new migrants—usually people for whom English is a second language. When those people are asked to identify themselves verbally, it is absolutely possible that the name they have and the way they pronounce their name may not be entirely obvious to the person checking their name against the roll. That person may find it extremely difficult to find that person on the roll, and that may be used as a barrier to that person being able to vote. But just the act of actually having to engage verbally, rather than presenting your EasyVote card that has been provided to you in order to facilitate you casting your vote, may be off-putting—in fact, it probably will be off-putting—for a lot of new migrants who struggle to engage in everyday activities in New Zealand because of the language barriers they have.

I think particularly of the former refugee communities that I have in Palmerston North, and I know that other members represent those kinds of communities right across the country. The older generations, in particular, who have spent many, many years of their lives in refugee camps, have not had the opportunity for education and certainly have not had the opportunity to learn English whilst they have been living in those refugee camps. Their knowledge of English is extremely limited, but I can tell you this. They are desperate to vote, but they do not want any barriers put up in front of them. I wonder why exactly it is that the National Party seems so hell-bent on putting barriers up in front of people.

I do see this as a “Voter Turnout Reduction Bill”. I do see it as a “Suppression of Democracy Bill”. I think, actually, frankly, what we have discovered—because this is going on around the world—is that this is just another Crosby/Textor special. It has advised the parties of the right around the world of another way they can rig elections and rort the elections in their favour. But the biggest rort, of course, is the thing that is missing from this legislation, and that is the abolition of the coat-tailing provisions. Seventy-one percent of New Zealanders want the coat-tailing provisions to go. There was no good reason for them to have been put into our electoral law in the first place.

Hon Maurice Williamson: I’ve got two words for you: Jim Anderton.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: The member brings up Jim Anderton. You could have put a small thermonuclear weapon under Wigram and you still would not have got rid of Jim Anderton. There was no coat-tailing involved in that. The people of Wigram loved Jim Anderton and they kept returning him. That was the situation in Wigram, Maurice Williamson, so please do not try to compare John Banks with the situation down in Wigram with Jim Anderton. No, that is not a valid analogy to make at all.

What is happening right now is that the National Party is making deals with the likes of ACT. Peter Dunne did not used to have to rely on a deal with the National Party but now he does. And, of course, we do not know what is going to happen with Colin Craig. Maybe Murray is going to have to give up his seat to Colin Craig to make sure National gets itself over the line. New Zealanders are sick of this. You gave them the review, then you listened to what everybody had to say but you did not like it, so you said: “No, we’re not going to continue on with that.”, even though the vast majority of New Zealanders wanted the change to happen and the National Government promised them that when the review happened, changes would be made to MMP. That is what New Zealand expected. That is what New Zealand was promised. But because of its own self-interest, the National Party has failed to deliver on the promise it made before the last election.

I do hope that this Parliament gets the opportunity later this year to consider the bill in my name that would get rid of the coat-tailing provisions. I do hope that we get far enough through the members’ orders of the day in order to debate that before the election, because I want to hear why the National Party thinks that it is the right thing to do to block the logical change that New Zealanders are asking for. We have a party vote threshold. If parties can get to that threshold, they can be represented with list MPs in the House. That is what New Zealanders want to see happen. That is what is missing from this legislation. The reason it is missing is that the National Party wants to rort the electoral system in its own interests, which is the same reason it is trying to suppress voter turnout with the changes that were made—

Simply put, the title of the Electoral Amendment Bill should be changed to the “Electoral (Diluting Democracy) Amendment Bill”, because that is exactly what it does. The first substantial sentence on the front of this bill says that “The Electoral Amendment Bill seeks to make amendments to the Electoral Act 1993 to improve services to voters, candidates and parties in time for the 2014 general election.” It is our argument on this side of the Chamber that, because of the way that the Government has amended this bill since it first arrived in the House for its first reading, it will in fact make life harder for voters in the 2014 election.

A number of our speakers during Part 1 of this debate asked why the Minister responsible for the bill, the Minister of Justice, is making the changes around the enrolment confirmation card, which most New Zealanders know as the EasyVote card. I do notice that we have got a new Minister in the chair, the Minister of Immigration, who I have found in the past to be quite reasonable in the fact that he wants things that we put in legislation to be evidence-based. I know that in other parts of legislation such as the breath-alcohol limit he has asked this House that everything be evidence-based. So I ask the Minister in the chair what the evidence base is for the National Party to remove from this bill at the select committee stage the EasyVote card, which most New Zealanders have relied on for a couple of elections now to ensure that when they go to the ballot booths on election day—most Kiwis go to the voting booths on election day—the experience they have has integrity and is efficient, and that they can exercise their democratic right to vote in a general election.

My experience has been that when constituents receive their EasyVote card—or, as it is called within the legislation, the enrolment confirmation card—that is their tick-box to say they are ready to go and are enrolled to vote in the election. I know that if a number of people in my electorate of Mana do not get that card this time round because it is not being protected in this legislation, they will be confused as to whether they are good to go and vote. Why would you want to cause confusion out there amongst the voters 6 months out from a general election if you want your democratic process to have integrity and to encourage people to go out there and vote?

I do not expect to hear a response from the Minister in the chair, even though I would like to, but I guess the answer would be that the Government wants to discourage people from voting. You have got to ask what kind of Government that would be if it does not want people to take part in the democratic process. What kind of Government do you have when it discourages people through legislation and through mechanisms in legislation, like an EasyVote card, from voting? You have got to ask the question, and the question has been asked here many, many times, why this piece of legislation has changed or morphed into what it is now, compared with what it was at the first reading, when the Minister of Justice said that the EasyVote card part of this bill was a key part of this legislation. What has happened between the first reading and the select committee stage for that to be removed?

The EasyVote card is something that is pretty simple. It has someone’s name on it. It has someone’s address. As Holly Walker has said, to help the people officiating on election day, it has the page number and the line number of that page so they can be easily identified to go and vote. What has this Government got against that? If it has got a problem with that, it needs to tell us. Nowhere through this Committee stage, nowhere through the select committee stage, and, I guess, nowhere in the third reading stage will we get a justification as to why this Government is diluting democracy. That is why I argue that the title of this bill should be amended, because that is exactly what this Government is doing.

Iain Lees-Galloway has raised a number of examples as to why the EasyVote card encourages participation. If you have got a strange-looking or strange-sounding name, the EasyVote card can help, because the person officiating in the booth or at the ballot box that day has to go through the electoral roll and recognise you. I know that in my electorate there will be some people who, because they do not have that card and struggle with English, will not go and vote. We need to encourage every New Zealander not only to be on the roll but to go out and vote. But this particular deletion from the bill, which so far has not been explained to us, will discourage New Zealanders from going out and voting. I do ask the Minister in the chair, in the closing stages of this Committee debate, whether he can give us some idea—evidence-based—as to why this is happening. The excuse of voter fraud has been bandied around, but there does not seem, as Iain Lees-Galloway has said in his speech, to have been an outbreak of voter fraud in the last two elections. I certainly have not experienced it in my electorate. So can the Minister in the chair please give us a justification and an evidence base as to why this has changed in this legislation?

In other parts of this legislation, the evidence-based approach has worked. I did—I think comically—refer to a part of the bill that has been removed. That was around the use of rosettes on election day. There were a number of submissions to the Justice and Electoral Committee that I have read that said that bringing in that piece of legislation would make no difference. So I think that on that occasion the Justice and Electoral Committee made a very wise decision. It realised that having that particular thing in this piece of legislation was a silly thing, so, on evidence, it decided to remove that. I think that is something that the select committee needs to be praised for. But there does not seem to be a very uniform approach to use an evidence-based approach to this bill when it comes to the removal of the enrolment confirmation card.

Hon Maurice Williamson: How many calls have you had? This is getting boring.

KRIS FAAFOI: I can take another one, if you want, Mr Williamson. Just in conclusion, if the Minister in the chair could change the tactics of the National Party and take a call to justify why the EasyVote card has been removed, maybe we will have some justification for something that the Government is doing, which I think is really being designed to suppress democracy in our country.

In what will be my final substantive contribution in the Committee stage debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill, I would like to propose an alternative title for the bill, and that is the “Electoral Fraud is a Red Herring Amendment Bill”. Fraud is indeed the excuse, or the reason, that has been given for the removal of the clauses related to the EasyVote card, which we have largely been debating for most of this afternoon.

I want to quote from the Justice and Electoral Committee report. The committee gave its rationale for the removal of those clauses. This is what it said: “We consider that the proposed provision for a new process known operationally as EasyVote Express”—i.e., the scannable EasyVote cards—“would in effect lower the threshold for casting a vote, increasing the potential for fraud and harming the integrity of the voting process.” I just want to drill down into that a little bit more to see whether we can, as a Committee, begin to understand what that increased risk of electoral fraud supposedly is, because it is my contention that it is, in fact, a red herring, and that is why I am proposing an alternative title for this bill.

Let us have a look at what voter fraud might actually mean in practice, because we have been very short on practical examples in this debate. From my understanding of the possibilities for voter fraud and the concerns that may have underpinned the removal of these clauses, the concern is that somebody may find or steal the EasyVote card belonging to another person and take it along and impersonate them at the polling booth, which may increase the risk of electoral fraud. Well, first of all, I would say that that is equally as possible under the status quo, where we have EasyVote cards that are not electronically scannable, as it is if we make them electronically scannable. The risk of that happening neither increases nor decreases as a result of removing the clauses from this bill.

Secondly, I would say that it is pretty unlikely that that would happen. Most people do not leave their mail lying about in the street. They do not leave EasyVote cards on their front lawn or on the berm in front of their house for people to collect. But if somebody was so exercised and so desirous of committing electoral fraud that they were going to go and steal somebody’s EasyVote card out of their letterbox, knowing that what they needed to do was look for an Electoral Commission - branded envelope with the orange guy on the front of it in the letterbox and steal it so that they could commit electoral fraud, then they could do that.

Actually, they could also steal the enrolment confirmation letter that the Electoral Commission sends to every voter, because it looks the same. It is in the same kind of envelope, and it would provide exactly the same information that somebody who was hell-bent on committing electoral fraud by stealing an individual’s EasyVote card out of their letterbox would need to go down to the polling booth and commit that fraud.

So the EasyVote card neither increases nor decreases the risk of somebody doing this incredibly bizarre and incredibly unlikely action of stealing an EasyVote card out of somebody’s letterbox. But let us say that they did do that and they got hold of somebody else’s EasyVote card and they took it along to the polling booth to try to commit fraud by voting in somebody else’s name. If the person in whose name they were attempting to vote had already voted that day, then they would not be able to do that because the Electoral Commission—at least under what is proposed—would have scanned the EasyVote card and it would show up that that voter had already voted. So a question mark would immediately be raised, through the electronic system, that there was somebody who was coming to vote for a second time.

Actually, under the status quo, where the card is not scannable, that would not show up in the system until much later. So the people at the polling booth would have to allow that person to vote because they would not know that they had already voted at a different polling booth. So the proposal to make the card scannable, which has now been deleted from the bill, would actually decrease the chance of that happening.

But let us say that someone manages to cast a vote in somebody else’s name and the true voter has voted already at a different polling booth. When the Electoral Commission staff collate the rolls at the end of the day, they see that the same person has apparently voted twice. That flags for them that there is a problem there—either someone has erroneously voted twice or there is an instance of potential fraud. If they ring up the voter and ask: “Which polling booth did you vote at?”, and the voter says: “At Pētone Central School”, the Electoral Commission staff would then say: “That’s funny, because somebody tried to vote in your name at Wilford School.” The voter would then say: “No, it wasn’t me. I definitely voted at Pētone Central School.”, and therefore the Electoral Commission is able to determine, and cross out, the vote that was erroneously cast. That is how it works at the moment.

Making the EasyVote card scannable, as the proposal was in the original version of this bill, would, in fact, make it faster and easier for that to occur by making that an electronic process, not a manual compilation later in the day, so it actually decreases the risk of electoral fraud. It is nonsensical to me to remove that provision, and that is why I am proposing the title “Electoral Fraud is a Red Herring Amendment Bill”—that would be the risk on which the decision to delete these clauses would be based.

The other way that somebody could commit electoral fraud does not even involve the EasyVote card, because you do not need the EasyVote card to vote at present. You can just go to the polling booth and give your name and address and they look you up on the roll. All the EasyVote card does is make it faster and easier for the staff in the polling place to do that. But if I was hell-bent on committing electoral fraud, like all these thousands and legions of fraudulent voters who are apparently desirous of doing, then all I would need to do is go and give an erroneous name and address of somebody I know who lives in the electorate and try to vote in their name.

I could do that without an EasyVote card, and, perhaps, more easily because I would not even have to erroneously pass something over. I could just say that, yes, my name is Joe Bloggs and I live at that address. If that was the name of a voter on the electoral roll, I could vote in that person’s name. That is no different under the removal of these clauses from how it would be otherwise. The risk neither increases nor decreases with the use of an EasyVote card. Yet, again, we have that excuse of the potential of increased fraud being held up as an example.

In fact, the Electoral Commission gave very clear evidence on this when the select committee first did its inquiry into the 2011 general election. The Electoral Commission knows when this happens. It gets a flag because it sees that the same voter has apparently voted twice. It rings that voter up to find out where they voted and it discards the irrelevant vote. It prosecutes any cases of electoral fraud. It has very clear processes to do that and they work very well. So there is no need for this exaggerated fear about voter fraud that has resulted in the removal of a number of very useful clauses that would allow the EasyVote card to be scanned and used as a record that a vote has been cast.

If we take a cynical view, which I am increasingly inclined to do, like my colleagues in the Labour Party, you could argue that electoral fraud actually is a red herring here. It is not about electoral fraud. We have had very clear evidence that there is no increased risk of electoral fraud. Electoral fraud is not an activity that is undertaken on a widespread basis in New Zealand. When it is, it is easily caught. The very few cases that we have had have been prosecuted. In fact, this is about trying to reduce the use of a card that maximises people’s participation in our democracy.

The EasyVote card streamlines the process of voting for many people, particularly for those for whom English is a second language, for those who have impairments, and for those who may be new migrants. It makes the process less intimidating and much easier. And for the staff in the polling booth it makes the process faster and smoother and allows them to get through the very busy and important work on election day in a more efficient manner. And we are throwing all of those things out because of some beaten-up fear of increased voter fraud, which is not borne out by any evidence of reality. In fact, the risk of fraud is neither increased nor decreased by the use of the EasyVote card.

So I think it is a real shame, and I am increasingly inclined to take the view, as my colleague Mr Lees-Galloway has, that there is some ulterior motive at work here. If the Government was listening to reason and listening to common sense it would have allowed the bill to be amended and to revert back to the way it was when it was first drafted, to ensure that the EasyVote card provisions, which would enable the Electoral Commission to make the card scannable and use it as an electronic record of a vote cast, were included. That is a sensible and smart modernisation of our electoral law, and that is what should have happened.

There would have been consensus across this Committee, albeit that the select committee did not recommend it. Upon closer consideration in the Committee of the whole House, which is the proper place for that to happen, there would have been consensus to make those changes or to leave the bill as it was originally drafted, to allow the Electoral Commission to make those changes. And it is a real shame that that has not happened. So my proposed title for the bill as it now stands is the “Electoral Fraud is a Red Herring Amendment Bill”, and I invite listeners to consider the Government’s motives carefully.

I move, That the question be now put.

To the member who is just arriving, Brendan Horan, because you are now in the Chamber, you are required to vote. I will just ask the Clerk. We are voting on clause 2 of the Electoral Amendment Bill. The Clerk is going to call for your vote.