Special votes and the 2023 general election

Summarised by Centrist

In “Election ‘23: The Special Votes”, Graeme Edgeler covers the process of how the official vote count in New Zealand’s general election is determined. This number is made up by combining ordinary and special votes. 

A counting of the ordinary votes has given us the preliminary vote count, which says National and ACT have a majority. 

However, “The preliminary result is mostly meaningless from a legal standpoint, but we don’t want to wait two weeks to hear some number, so we get a rough and ready count of the ordinary votes,” says Edgeler. 

Special votes are votes cast overseas, votes cast outside the electorate, votes cast by telephone or dictation service, etc. 

Since the 2011 election, special votes have tended to favour left-aligned parties. 

If National loses a seat or two as they’ve done historically, they may lose their majority. 

Read more over at Public Address