September 21, 2017
Advance voting flushes out unenrolled
The Electoral Commission has put on extra staff to help the large number of people who have wanted to enroll during advance voting.
Chief electoral officer Alicia Wright says she has taken to heart criticism Maori voters were given wrong advice or wrong forms.
She has reminded the 15,000 poll workers that people can walk into any early polling booth in any electorate to vote.
They can also enroll and vote at the same time – something they can’t do on election day on Saturday.
That has put pressure on some booths.
"People have done it in droves so we have had since the start of advance voting a over 35,000 people enrol. We realised we need more support there so we brought in some of our enrolment folk to help people do that and make the enrolment process simpler to make easier and simpler," Ms Wright says.
As of Tuesday the Electoral Commission had recorded just over 670,000 early votes, almost matching the total for the 2014 election with three days to go.
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