Ensuring election integrity for 2026 and the future
The Electoral Commission says changes will be in place for the next general election that will strengthen the way votes are recorded, counted and checked.
The Commission is implementing recommendations from the Auditor-General’s review of vote counting errors in 2023 and a subsequent report on post-election and enrolment processes undertaken by PwC. A progress update is available on elections.nz.
“The public can have confidence in our quality assurance processes and the election results,” says the Hon Simon Moore KC, who was appointed Chair of the Electoral Commission Board in November 2024.
“We fully accepted the Auditor-General’s report when it was released in 2024 and as part of our response, commissioned an independent audit of our processes. As a result, we have made, and are continuing to make, significant assurance improvements to our enrolment and post-election processes.
“There was funding in Budget 2025 of $18.7m over four years to support these integrity improvements,” says Simon Moore.
This is in addition to $61.9m over four years to deliver a good level of service for the 2026 General Election and to start modernising election delivery.
Modernising services
“New Zealand has a high performing electoral system but it is largely manual and becoming more difficult to maintain as the population increases. We need to act now to ensure future elections can be delivered to a high standard,” says Simon Moore.
“As well as making improvements to our assurance processes to strengthen the integrity of elections, we are beginning a programme of modernisation including moving towards more digital communications with voters.”
Initial steps towards modernisation for 2026 include using data matching with other agencies to encourage people to enrol, as provided for in the current Electoral Act. There will also be greater use of emails and SMS messages to prompt people to update their enrolments.
The Electoral Amendment Bill before Parliament includes provision to move further towards automatic address updates in the future.
Board advisor appointments
The Electoral Commission Board has appointed three advisors to assist the Board as it oversees work to modernise election delivery and ensure effective quality assurance controls are in place.
The advisors are David O’Connor, Murray Jack and Sue Elliott ONZM, who between them bring added expertise in risk and assurance, innovation and change, and strategic communications in support of change.
Links to more information
2025 progress update on implementing the Auditor-General's recommendations
2024 media release on the Auditor-General's report
Board members and advisor biographies