Māori Electoral Option starts in your mailbox
If you’re Māori and on the electoral roll, check your mailbox from Monday. Over 427,000 orange Māori Electoral Option packs will be delivered across the country from Monday 25 March – the first day of the 2013 Māori Electoral Option.
“Everyone enrolled to vote, who has identified themselves as of Māori descent, will be sent their personalised Māori Electoral Option pack in the mail on Monday,” says Murray Wicks, Enrolment Services’ National Manager. “This is regardless of whether you are on the Māori roll or the General roll.”
“The Māori Electoral Option is your only opportunity to switch between rolls, so it’s really important to open your pack,” says Mr Wicks. “It has information about the choice and what it means, and the form you’ll need to make your choice.”
“If you choose the General roll, you will vote for an MP in a General Electorate for the 2014 and 2017 General Elections. If you choose the Māori roll, you will vote for an MP in a Māori Electorate for the 2014 and 2017 General Elections,” says Mr Wicks. “But it doesn’t affect which parties you can choose from with your party vote.”
“You only need to fill in the form if you want to change from the General roll to the Māori roll or from the Māori roll to the General roll, or if you want to update your details.”
If people receive a pack for someone who no longer lives at the address, the pack should be forwarded to their new address or marked ‘return to sender’ and posted back.
“If you don’t get a pack it means you’re not correctly enrolled to vote. All you need to do is fill in an enrolment form, and that’s easy,” says Mr Wicks.
To get an enrolment form freetext your name and address to 3676, call 0800 36 76 56 or go to any PostShop. You can also enrol or update your details online at www.elections.org.nz
Only New Zealand Māori or descendants of New Zealand Māori can be registered on the Māori Electoral Roll. Under the Electoral Act, everyone else is not regarded as New Zealand Māori and must register on the General Roll.
There are currently 427,000 people identified as Māori enrolled to vote. 235,000 are on the Māori Roll and 192,000 on the General Roll.
The results of the Māori Electoral Option together with the results of the 2013 Census are used to determine the number of Māori and General Electorates there will be in Parliament and to revise electorate boundaries.
More information about the Māori Electoral Option is available from www.elections.org.nz.