95bFM National's Dr Shane Reti: 'Lowering the voting age will not solve low voter turnout'
22 September, 2022
Interview by Casper McGuire, adapted by David Liwei Shi
National MP Dr Shane Reti argues that the public has no motivation to push lowering the voting age forward. Photo: New Zealand National Party.
The 2022 local elections have begun, with voting closing on 8 October at 12 noon.
But the issue of low voter engagement particularly amongst young people, Māori, and Pasifika remains an issue.
National MP Dr Shane Reti told Casper McGuire on 95bFM's The Wire that “voters are becoming less engaged in both local and central politics”, and urged those eligible to vote in the current local elections.
“Voting is the price of democracy and a privilege of citizenship."
Reti is concerned that if voter turnout continues to plummet at its current rate, we could see even less representation of underrepresented communities in local and central government.
“The smaller the sample of those who vote, the less representative you are of those collective voices.”
Referencing recent voting statistics, Reti said the number of youth, Māori, and Pasifika voters are significantly less than the eligible voting population.
A law change in 2019 means this year council chief executives are required to help "foster participation" during local elections.
Currently, ambassadors have been sent onto streets to encourage people to enrol to vote.
“It will always never be enough, but I do acknowledge the effort that has been made,'' says Reti.
An independent electoral review panel has also begun seeking public input into our current electoral system and are trying to find ways to boost engagement.
A lower voting age accompanied by civics education has been suggested to improve voter turnout, but Reti said the public has no motivation to push this forward.
"Lowering the voting age will not solve low voter turnout."
As well as improving voter turnout, the high number of uncontested seats has also been identified as a problem.
Around 20% of the local body elections around the country are uncontested, meaning that the number of seats available is the same or more than the number of candidates.
But Reti said he is wary of introducing policies that may be “heavy handed” and threaten the “core values of a democracy”.
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