Labour’s voter suppression claims grow as Mallard invokes Trump

In brief

• Labour figures are warning of voter suppression, with Hipkins adviser Trevor Mallard invoking Trump.

• Mallard’s hall opened a day late; 207 polling places operated nationwide on Labour Day.

• The 2023 election also suffered staffing and counting problems under Labour.

• The new enrolment deadline could exclude eligible voters. Sean Plunket questions Labour’s wider narrative, although Hipkins says he’ll accept the result.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins says the government has deliberately tried to disenfranchise younger voters. His justice spokesperson, Camilla Belich, warns up to 263,000 eligible New Zealanders are not enrolled. And Trevor Mallard, a veteran Labour figure advising Hipkins' campaign, has compared this election's voting arrangements to Donald Trump's America.

The accusations have spread beyond one disgruntled voter or one closed polling place. But do they add up to proof of voter suppression?

A claim gathering momentum

Mallard made his comparison after arriving at his usual Wainuiomata voting hall on Labour Day, 26 October, and finding it shut. He also objected to the new enrolment deadline.

Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has accused the coalition of trying to suppress voting, while Labour's Ayesha Verrall has questioned the decision to start advance voting on a public holiday.

Labour's concerns are not limited to campaign remarks. In a parliamentary report last year, its MPs warned that the enrolment changes could undermine the legitimacy of the election result.

Former Labour adviser and Sunday Star-Times columnist Vernon Small has since written that, for the first time in four decades covering elections, he has a “disturbing sense that the outcome might be illegitimate”. 

He also cited attempts to exploit MMP overhangs.

What happened at Mallard’s hall?

The Wainuiomata hall was closed the day Mallard showed up to vote, but opened the next morning. The Electoral Commission said some venues were unavailable because of the public holiday. Stuff reported budget constraints behind the local closure.

Across the country, 207 voting places opened on Labour Day, offering 1,437 hours of voting. More than 2,300 are scheduled for election day on 7 November.

A closed local venue is inconvenient for many, including shift workers and people without transport. But given that the hall opened a day later, it’s a far cry from suggesting anyone was deliberately targeted for their political views.

What about Labour’s own election?

The Electoral Commission faced serious problems at the 2023 election, when Labour was in power.

The Auditor-General documented shortages of election workers, two electronic roll outages on election day, delays in processing enrolments, and errors in the official count.

Those failures did not, by themselves, show that Labour had engineered problems to hurt National voters. The Commission ran the election independently then, just as it does now. So what evidence turns this year's polling-place problem into a deliberate effort to suppress opposition votes?

The deadline is the harder case

Under former prime minister Jacinda Ardern, Labour's 2020 law allowed enrolment on election day. The coalition ended that in 2025, bringing the cutoff forward to 25 October, 13 days before the election. Eligible people who had never enrolled and missed the deadline cannot have their votes counted this time. The Attorney-General warned the restriction appeared inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act.

The government argues late enrolments created too much work. About 450,000 enrolments or updates were made during voting in 2023, and more than 600,000 special votes needed processing.

Electoral law professor Andrew Geddis has warned the cutoff could hit groups more likely to vote left. But special votes are not the same as late enrolments, and nobody can say how those who missed the deadline would have voted.

The latest Electoral Commission figures put enrolment at 93.6%, against a final 94.7% in 2023. Those rates are not directly comparable, and the number of potential voters actually turned away is not yet known.

Notably, NZ First supported Labour's move to expand enrolment in 2020, then voted with National and ACT to restrict it in 2025.

Broadcaster Sean Plunket has suggested the growing claims could prepare Labour supporters to question the outcome if the party loses.

However, there is no evidence currently that Labour is planning to reject the result. Asked directly by 1News whether it would accept the election outcome, Hipkins answered: “Yes, absolutely.”

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