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Voting in New Zealand Local Government Elections: The Need to Encourage Greater Voter Turnout

Asquith, A; Webster, K; Cardow, A
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http://hdl.handle.net/10292/15434
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Abstract
Within a global context, local government in New Zealand occupies an enviable position: it enjoys both a statutorily-defined ‘power of general competence’ and financial autonomy from central government. However, despite this, voter turnout rates in New Zealand local elections continue to fall as ever fewer New Zealanders engage in this fundamental act of civic engagement. This review article examines the decline in voting over the last four New Zealand local government elections (2010/13/16/19). It aims to do three things: plot the decline; identify and analyse the causes of this decline; and suggest ways in which the decline might be countered. The authors reach the conclusion that local government in New Zealand is at a crossroads – it will either be rejuvenated as a source of local democracy and prosper, or decline into an administrative arm of central government.
Keywords
Social Sciences; Public Administration; Local government; Elections; Citizen engagement; New Zealand; Party-politicization; Participation
Date
June 1, 2021
Source
Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance, (24), 79-97. https://doi.org/10.5130/cjlg.vi24.7541
Item Type
Journal Article
Publisher
UTS ePress
DOI
10.5130/cjig.vi24.7541
Publisher's Version
https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/cjlg/article/view/7541
Rights Statement
© 2021 Andy Asquith, Karen Webster and Andrew Cardow. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.

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