Online voting is used in New Zealand by many organisations, but not yet at local or central government elections. Two trials for local government elections have been proposed, for the 2016 and the 2019 elections. These trials were cancelled but there is support from some in local government to proceed with a trial in 2022.
This project page includes links to work on the topic of online voting.
The Policy Observatory’s Dr. Julienne Molineaux has written a report, Solving and creating problems: Online voting in New Zealand. The report is structured around problems and solutions: what problems do proponents hope online voting will solve? What do we know about whether online voting would actually solve these problems? And what new problems might online voting create? This report was written to provide background material and references on some of the issues raised in discussions around online voting; it is not an analysis of any specific policy, document or model for online voting.
- An earlier version of this report - A working paper on online voting
- A short online voting FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) post can be found here
The Department of Internal Affairs was asked what advice or input it had given to the proposed 2019 online voting trial.
