Furthering the inter-agency support work to have an agreed (inter-agency) risk profile
established by April – a draft risk profile is being worked upon based on discussion and
feedback at the first Risk and Security Working Group meeting on 24 February.
Māori advisory team
Support Voting Services with Kaupapa Māori Voting places (Location - kura and or places of
significance to Iwi)
Support in the development of the advertisement production for the MEO campaign
Recruitment
Translation work.
Preparing for the future
Our capability is noticeably growing in Te Ao Māori. We are continuing to develop our
tikanga that is appropriate to us in-house and appropriate to our different communities.
Our translation work for MEO and GE is better positioning ourselves to have powerful
conversations with Iwi.
Building relationships and understanding
n/a
Other progress
n/a
Issues under management
n/a
Other news
Mark Lawson is currently recruiting for a Senior Advisor – Interagency Liaison role to support
trust and security work.
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Building relationships and understanding
Hosted a meeting with the Broadcasting Standards Authority, Advertising Standards
Authority and Media Council to establish relationships and prepare for the upcoming
media briefing in April.
Met with Stats NZ and LINZ to discuss a high level timetable and budgets for the next
boundary review in 2025.
Continuing meeting weekly with the Ministry of Justice E&C policy team on legislative
change and other electoral work. We met for a casual catch-up on 1 February to establish
relationships in preparation for cooperative work this year.
Support to Independent Electoral Review Panel secretariat including working on a range of
information requests, with input from staff in the Operations group.
Kristina, Karl, and Marie presented at the Justice Committee’s annual review of the
Electoral Commission on 16 February.
Other progress
Dean handed over IRT lead during February.
Review of procurement templates being developed by the Enterprise Group.
Continuing to review collateral, web content and statements of work being developed for
the continuous Māori Electoral Option, which comes into force on 31 March.
Working on section 112 requests for electoral roll data.
Advisory opinions
We received 20 advisory requests in February. All were responded to within the 5 working
timeframe.
Party administration and compliance
Information was sent to registered parties on their obligations around returns for
donations and loans from 2022.
Following the return of the writ for the Hamilton West By-Election, registration
applications continued. Freedoms New Zealand was registered on the Register of Political
Parties on 16 February. The Opportunities Party successfully applied for a variation of their
logo.
Board papers have been prepared for registration of the logo of Freedoms New Zealand
and an application by New Conservative to vary their logo.
The Democrats for Social Credit informed us they do not intend to contest the 2023
General Election and were deregistered in February. A Gazette notice to this effect was
submitted on 1 March.
Work continues on the application for registration from the New Nation Party.
Continuing to respond to enquiries from prospective parties around the registration
process, broadcasting allocation and the election.
After a public enquiry, the Māori Party received a notice that their Facebook page did not
contain a promoter statement. They have since amended their page.
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Issues under management
We are continuing to work with the IT team on the solution needed for parties to access the
nominations system via the Party Portal and to ensure that the EMS and results systems
work for umbrella/component party relationships.
Other news
Resourcing
Recruitment continues for a permanent Legal Advisor role.
6 proposed secondments from the Ministry of Justice from 12 June to 22 October to
support the Legal and Policy Team were approved at the quarterly hui between MOJ Policy
and the Electoral Commission.
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people and was watched by 1 million online. This provided a key opportunity to engage with Māori
from across Aotearoa ahead of both the Māori Electoral Option and General Election campaigns.
Alongside our Enrolment station, we had several activations to pique the interest of those passing
by and to spark up conversation around the upcoming electoral events. The most popular of these
activations were our kirituhi stamps (Māori patterns placed onto the arms or legs), and our “Pick
Your Favourite Kai” Voting Poll. A busy four days saw several hundred electors get enrolled.
Preparing for an election
Māori Electoral Option:
Development work on the MIKE system changes is progressing well. Brochures and envelopes for
the mailout have been printed and New Zealand Post has completed the dress rehearsal process
and testing of macrons using EC data. New Zealand Post has also carried out development and
testing of changes to the ROE1 enrolment form and ROE9 confirmation letter, which are being
updated to incorporate MEO changes.
Preparations for the Māori Electoral Option campaign have progressed. A detailed production
timeline has been agreed but timeframes are very tight ahead of the campaign launch. Production
is moving at pace and to date has progressed very well.
A creative approach for the campaign was agreed in February and talent and crew, including sand
artist Marcus Winter, were confirmed and contracted after Ministry of Justice and neutrality
checks were completed.
A stills photo shoot was held in Auckland to capture imagery to use across campaign assets. Post-
production was completed and imagery has been applied to collateral that will be used by
community engagement teams, external stakeholders and our website.
TV and radio scripts and messages for other media channels were drafted and circulated for
comment. Storyboards for television and video content were drafted and preparations are
underway to film in Auckland in mid-March.
A media approach for the Māori Electoral Option was completed and agreed in February, enabling
the first media placements for the campaign to be booked.
Work to prepare the website for the launch of the campaign is underway.
A campaign kit to support internal teams to know and understand the Option, along with guidance
to deliver information in political neutrality way, and how the Commission will deliver information
to Māori has been drafted.
Content has been drafted and sent to alternate format providers to create accessible versions,
including Large Print, Easy Read, Braille and audio.
Kelly 9(2)(a) has started as Project Lead – Partnerships and Contracts. Planning for training is
progressing well and a walkthrough of the community engagement training plan has been held to
get feedback from internal stakeholders. A procurement process has been carried out for an
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agency to provide temporary enrolment processing staff, PersolKelly has been confirmed and will
commence recruitment for 11 staff, due to start training on 27 March.
A working group has been formed and is meeting regularly to assess impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle
on delivery of the campaign, our regional teams are providing input on the expectations of
communities in affected areas. We are assessing the delivery of the community engagement
component of the campaign in the worst affected areas, and determining how we may tweak that
delivery. We are identifying ways of reaching people who have been displaced and may not
receive a mailout pack, including through targeted advertising.
We are also in the process of finalising the contract statement of work with Telnet for MEO
delivery. This includes the required setup for the event and the provision of dedicated Te Reo
speakers to support Māori descent electors in preparation for Māori Electoral Option 23. Further
investigation on other potential options of Te Reo capability to assist with public enquiries have
been explored. It concluded that the utilisation of Te Reo speakers in Telnet remains the best
approach to ensure consistency and quality of the service.
Websites
Updated website content to support the changes to the Māori Electoral Option has been prepared
and is now being translated. This has also meant updates to some of our existing video resources,
which have been re-edited to take the changes into account.
We are engaging with our website vendor, Pikselin, to make the changes to vote.nz necessary to
conduct the Māori Electoral Option and accept registrations for Kids Voting 2023.
Always on advertising activity
Always on activity continued in February to deliver enrolment messages to people who have
recently moved house, turned 18, eligible to enrol on the provisional roll and recently moved to
New Zealand. Messages ran across Google Search, digital and social media. New content is being
trialled on Tik Tok to reach younger New Zealanders aged 18 to 24. A media schedule for the next
quarter is being prepared.
The team are supporting the development of materials for Community Engagement and Voting
Services, including pull up banners, posters, brochures and flags, that can be used outside of an
event, to strengthen our brand look and feel and provide trust and confidence.
Preparing for the future
The GE23 community engagement strategy has now been approved by the Board and the first
stage of the implementation is underway with a staff socialisation session set for early March.
Once this is in place regional teams will develop localised plans to support the GE as well as
consider longer term opportunities for engagement.
The Monitoring and Engagement framework is nearing completion and staff will be trained in use
of the tools from mid-March with the view to begin gathering data around the impact of both
MEO and GE engagement.
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The implementation of Diacritics functionality in MIKE has been completed. In addition to the
diacritics for addresses, staff can now enter names with diacritics from 16 February onwards and
training has been provided to all staff across the regions.
The procurement process for de-escalation training has been progressing well. Once the contract
process is completed, it is planned that the community engagement staff will receive training
which will be facilitated by an external vendor from the 22nd to 23rd of March. All permanent and
temporary staff for MEO will be attending. This is a half day training and there will be 6 sessions
delivered in different locations namely Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton, Gisborne, Wellington, and
Christchurch. There are up to 20 seats available for each location. The training will cover the
application of the Health and Safety Workplace Act (HSWA) of 2015 to aggressive vs assertive
behaviour, de-escalation techniques and incident reporting, among others.
Meeting with Leigh and MOJ, to discuss questions on the initial costing provided, policy options
and implications for Voting Age Bill.
The team have supported the development of the SLG and all staff wānanga and have worked
with P&C to implement and consult policy, communicate property moves, and improve the
Commission onboarding and induction processes.
Building relationships and understanding
We have begun investigating the opportunity to engage Stats NZ staff into to the temporary
workforce for the Commission once the census duties are completed.
We continue to have a diverse range of speakers at our fortnightly all staff meetings and provide
opportunities for people to connect. We have spoken at Electorate Manager training and engaged
with new Community Engagement leads to understand how we can best work together.
Stakeholder engagement
Manatū Wāhine Ministry for Women
Communications and Education is working with the Manatū Wāhine Ministry for Women on
shared opportunities to acknowledge 130 years of women’s suffrage in Aotearoa New Zealand on
19 September.
Census
Communications and Education and Enrolment continue to meet with senior leaders for the 2023
Census to share information about preparations for the Census and General Election and is linked
with their social media team.
Media
The focus of political journalists continues to be on the response to Cyclone Gabrielle and party
leadership. Newspapers around the country have also been marking candidate selections in
different electorates, as parties prepare for the general election.
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Items of interest include Newshub stories on whether there could be – at some point – a
referendum on lowing the voting age. They also ran a story on the Prime Minister ruling out a snap
election and included the results of an opinion poll in which 59% of people said they didn’t think
there should be an early election.
Items mentioning the Electoral Commission include a Newshub story on a complaint about a Pāti
Māori Instagram post which needed a promoter statement. Radio New Zealand talked to internet
experts about election advertising tactics that could be seen at this election including
microtargeting. Both stories included comment from us on the rules for election ads.
Strategic communications
Development of the stakeholder engagement plans continue to make good progress, with just two
needing drafting and a couple more needing final sign off.
Once we have those formalised we will be able to move into tracking that engagement, so we can
put some structure around who we are engaging with, the purpose and the outcome.
Work on raising the Commission’s public profile in the right way for the right reasons continues
with the updating of op-eds for Marie and Karl following their feedback. We’ve also noted a few
more opportunities for commentary in the media later in the year, but at this stage we’re looking
to get the first two signed off and pitched to media. Trust and community are key pillars of both.
Election Access Fund communications
Content to raise awareness of the Election Access Fund amongst disabled people is at the
production stage. A creative approach and casting were completed in February for a photography
shoot and radio recording in early March. All talent appearing in materials about the Fund have
lived experience of disability. Activity about the Fund is scheduled to go live in March. Additional
communications will be sent to stakeholders, including political parties and disability
organisations, before activity starts.
Election integrity
Work on our communications activity focused on integrity and building trust and confidence in
elections is continuing. This work is aligned with activity led by the Deputy Chief Electoral Officer
on integrity, security and trust and confidence in the election.
A new video about how votes are counted at Parliamentary elections has been created and
published on elections.nz. The video will give transparency to the process and be shared on our
social media platforms throughout election year.
The communications team is working with the voting services to create a video to show voters
what to expect when they get to a voting place and how to vote. Media will be invited to film their
own footage that they can use in news articles about the election.
A timeline for our approach and developing resources on election integrity has also been shared
internally for feedback. It includes a range of initiatives including working with social media
companies and publishing a Facts About The Election page on vote.nz which will form the basis of
proactive social media content for the year.
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Social Media
Work continues on Best Practice Guidelines for Community Management document, which details
how we will run and moderate our social media channels in the lead up to the General Election
and other events. The new Guidelines will be finalised before the end of March.
A free trial of Agorapulse, a social media management tool, has been underway. It’s unlikely we
will continue with this service as it does not meet our needs for responding to comments and
Direct Messages with quality assurance capability. We are looking at alternative options, including
trialing new features for Sprout Social which was used at the 2020 General Election.
Posts were shared on our Instagram page and Instagram Stories of our community engagement
teams at Waitangi and the Governor General’s speech at the Electorate Managers training in
February. These posts generated good reach and Census appreciated us promoting their team’s
attendance at Waitangi alongside our community engagement team.
Our reach on Facebook increased by 917% and Instagram by 105% in February, compared to the
previous month. Reach is the number of accounts that saw any content from our Page, or about
our Page, including posts, stories, ads, social information, and more. The increase is largely
attributed to paid posts about the Election Access Fund.
The number of followers on our Facebook (28 new followers) and Instagram (46 new followers)
pages continues to rise and is expected to climb further when the Māori Electoral Option
campaign starts. The Commission currently has 46,609 Facebook followers, 2,700 Instagram
followers and 1,978 Twitter followers.
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Other progress
N/A
Issues under management
Impact of Cyclone Gabrielle on Māori Electoral Option as some affected electors were
reallocated as their properties were red stickered. The enrolment team is having regular
meetings to discuss different delivery options for those who were affected by the cyclone.
Staff located in the impacted regions continue to provide regular insights gathered from the
community regarding potential implications for engagement and enrolment activity, access
to affected areas, recruitment, and kaimahi ora.
Other news
Recruitment for Senior Advisor Learning and Development is now underway.
A Health and Safety Committee was held on the 23 February.
Enrolment processing staff supported five local body by-elections during the reporting
period, with the provision of elector data, nomination checks and special vote checks.
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