Other progress
The development of our translation work into regional dialects continues to improve. We are delighted
with the authentic quality and prompt service we are receiving from our kaimahi in MEO work. We look
forward to continuing this momentum in future general elections as our capability and processes become
the standard.
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Other progress Procurement for the 0800 Information Services begun on 15 May with the ROI release on GETS,
with stage one ROI closing on 6 June. The evaluation panel, including an external panel member
from Stats NZ will meet late June to consider responses and the shortlisted Recommendation
Report will be approved by the CEO as delegated by the Board at the April Board meeting. The RFP
will be released to the shortlisted providers on 2 October, closing 3 November.
Issues under management • The effectiveness of the Commission’s security controls and general security awareness remain
an ongoing and pressing risk. While work is underway to remediate issues identified at pace,
security awareness should remain front of mind for all leaders at the commission.
• Recruitment remains an ongoing challenge given labour market conditions.
Other news This month, Enterprise Services welcomed the following new starters:
Paul Abad: Assistant Accountant
Steph Davidson: Principal Advisor Enterprise Services
Melanie Duff: Administration Support Officer – Casual
Grier Rollinson: Admin Support Officer – Casual
Ashish Sharma: Systems Administrator IT
Karen Stewart: Manager property and Procurement
It is exciting seeing how much our teams are growing, and we look forward to the next round of
recruitment as the Finance and IT Teams are in the final stages of recruitment of the permanent
Senior Finance Business Partner and Finance Business Partner (positions currently filled by
contractors), Infrastructure Managers and two Solution Architects. However, the teams continue
to face recruitment challenges with the tight labour market and are still actively recruitment for
the following positions: Procurement Advisor, Executive Assistant to the DCE, Administration
Officer and Senior Systems Analyst.
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• Assisting with the Australian Parliamentary delegation
• Kristina and Natalie attended the ECANZ F&D Community of Practice on 23 May.
Other progress
Advisory opinions
We received 101 advisory requests in May. All were responded to within the 5 working day
timeframe. Requests from MPs are increasing as we approach the start of the regulated period.
We sought advice from the Parliamentary Service on the process for a List MP to change their
designated electorate and geographic indicator.
Official Information Act requests responded to in May We responded to five OIA requests in May. Both were within the 20 working day timeframe.
Requestor Topic
Response
Time
Withheld under s.9(2)(a)
1. What level of resourcing has been put aside to communicate the
19WD
Māori Electoral option to Aotearoa and Māori? (human
resources and $amount) over what period of time
2. Please forward a full communications strategy for
communicating this significant change for Māori, including all $
amounts, target populations and areas.
3. What medium/s are being used to communicate this change in
law to Māori
4. Please forward full plan of the roll out of this new law, including
timelines, $ amounts, target populations and areas.
5. How many extra staff have been employed to support with the
roll out of this law?
6. What training are staff given to roll out this new law?
7. What methods other than physical copy that requires posting
are available for Māori to switch rolls?
Withheld under s.9(2)(a)
•
How many people are currently on the unpublished electoral
7WD
roll?
•
How many people were on the unpublished electoral roll at
the time of the 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2020 general
elections?
•
What are the top five occupations of those on the
unpublished electoral roll?
•
What are the top five reasons people give, when going onto
the unpublished electoral roll?
Withheld under s.9(2)(a)
I would like a list of everyone that voted for the following parties, during
16WD
the 2020 election: Labour Party, Green Party, Māori Party, The
Opportunities Party (TOP) and Social Credit party
Page 2 of 3
Withheld under s.9(2)(a)
Regarding the master roll, RNZ requests release in full and in fully
14WD
searchable format:
• Details of all and any rules that relate to the master roll,
including over accessing it, using it and disseminating it
• Copies of records or similar of any entity or individual that has
ACCESSED the master roll at any time since access became
possible
o Including identification of that entity or individual
o Including the date/s of any and all access
Withheld under s.9(2)
In accordance with the purpose of the Official Information Act 1982 I
13WD
herein request copies of all other submitted Nomination forms and
proof of deposit being with the Electoral Commission at the midnight
tonight
With due particularity please supply all/ each and every item of
documentary information you hold on The New Zealand Labour Party
Inc. Minister of Justice Hon Kiri Allan and National Party's Dana
Fitzpatrick
Parliamentary questions responded to in May
We responded to no parliamentary questions in May.
Issues under management
•
Nothing to report
Other news
•
Job listing shared for Fixed Term Advisor Legal position.
Page 3 of 3
Preparing for an election
Māori Electoral Option
The Commission’s 0800 information services provider, Telnet, continues to attend public requests
on our behalf. There are 3 dedicated Te Reo speakers assisting with MEO. As at 30 May, there
were 851 email interactions and 2,380 phone calls received during the MEO campaign. The top 3
requests have been changing details, sending packs and new enrolment enquiries.
ROE42A data extract has been completed and 20,067 text messages were sent out on the 15th
May to Dormant electors on the Māori roll. This reminded them to visit Vote.nz by 13th July if they
want to change roll for this year’s election.
Various messages throughout the EnrolOnline process have been reviewed. These updates will be
rolled out in the next MIKE release before the Change Freeze kicks in.
Enrolment has completed telephone calls and emails to Māori electors potentially affected by the
Auckland flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle. This included electors on council “red” and “yellow”
sticker lists. The calls were well received, and we were able to assist a number of affected
electors.
The current phase of the Māori Electoral Option public information and education programme, to
raise awareness that you have until 13 July to change rolls if you want to, continues until 25 June.
It then moves to a new phase to let people know that time is running out if they want to change
rolls for this year’s general election.
New digital and printed resources in regional dialects were created and published online. These
are available for both internal and external stakeholders to use.
Production of new content with media partners was underway in May. This includes new video
and television content in partnership with Tāmati Rimene-Sproat, TVNZ and Whakaata Māori.
Radio announcers are delivering messages about the Option to rangatahi on Mai FM and new
video content to be shared across their digital channels has been filmed and is progressing in post-
production. These will be available for the Commission to share when they go live in mid-June.
Work is underway to identify how paid activity can help to support awareness of our community
engagement presence in communities affected by the cyclone.
Recruitment for General Election positions with SEP are now live, all locations for temporary staff
have been identified and around 15 MEO staff will rollover into the General Election.
General Update:
Enrolment: • The fit-out of enrolment processing centres is underway, and nearly complete. All three
centres have the necessary furniture and IT cabling completed. The set up of desktop
computers, printers and scanners is well advanced.
• Recruitment for enrolment processing centres is on track. Numbers are looking good for
Auckland and Christchurch, but Wellington is getting additional focus from PersolKelly.
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• Enrolment has led the development of an audit process for the computer based Special Vote
Declaration audit (an audit to ensure that the process is operational and that the “system” is
making the correct vote qualification decisions). Enrolment has led this work because the
process is centred around MIKE.
• The Dress-Rehearsal for production of the enrolment update packs has been completed.
Minor issues were picked up, all of which have been resolved.
• Recruitment interviews for Team leaders for the scaled-up enrolment processing teams,
enrolment support team and the Customer services team for GE23 have begun.
Voting Services:
• A programme of visits by the Board to meet with regional operations teams is underway. The
purpose is to provide assurance on the Commission’s election readiness at different stages of
its preparation e.g. the process to secure appropriate voting places. The programme also
provides an opportunity for the Board to hear about the challenges within each region and the
teps being taken to address them.
• Voting Services hosted a weeklong training in Christchurch on movement of voting materials
between electorates and inside headquarters. The purpose of the training is to simulate the
logistics of materials preparing for the GE.
General Election:
• The DCE Ops had presented to ELT regarding the oversight arrangement for GE2023 and
presented the structure of the proposed General Election Delivery Taskforce (GEDT). The
GEDT’s function is to support the overall delivery of GE2023 by allowing Regional Managers
and broader teams to come together in a forum to raise any critical issues and mitigate any
real time risks as well as escalating issues to ELT.
Preparing for the future
Manager Business Enablement has held a contract performance review meeting with Blue Star
Printing Services in May. No additional risk was identified, and the next review will be in mid-July
to track progress to GE2023 delivery. Now we are receiving weekly report to have a visibility of all
printing jobs requested by the Commission.
The 0800 Information Services procurement process kicked off on GETS on 15 May. As at 31 May,
there were 28 entities downloaded the Registration of Interest (ROI). This process will close on 6
June, and one question has been received so far. The ROI process is expected to complete by end
of June.
Building relationships and understanding
Manager Business Enablement has been working with P&C to request extending the contract of
De-escalation training (for community engagement and customer services teams) to the end of
September. This will allow staff who join EC after July to receive the training.
• Enrolment is contributing to the Judicial Recount document developed and managed by Legal
& Policy
• The Commission’s partnership agreement with MEC is steadily progressing and the document
is nearing completion.
Page 3 of 6
• Director SEP met with Ministry for Pacific Peoples and discussed a range of options for
collaboration, have agreed to progress to a partnership agreement.
• Director SEP has met with UNICEF to discuss options on connecting with their youth
ambassador work. This will progress in June.
• SEP and Voting Services jointly facilitated a ‘whiteboard’ session with the Office for Disability
Issues (a branch of Whaikaha) where we discussed a range of options for more accessible
voting places and engagement with disability communities. Further hui are planned for the
DPO Collective and Deaf Aotearoa in June.
Implementation of Strategic communications and engagement strategy
Stakeholder engagement plans for our six priority audience groups are largely complete. A
stakeholder Teams group as the next phase for reporting our stakeholder engagement. A letter to
help stakeholder leads reach out to key stakeholder and introduce / reintroduce themselves has
been drafted for review.
Op-eds penned for the Chief Electoral Officer and Board Chair have been reviewed again and are
awaiting sign off.
Election Access Fund communications An email was sent to disability and political party stakeholders to update them on the Fund and
point them to resources to share. There has been good engagement and sharing of information
about the Fund by disability groups. Posters have been printed to send to key stakeholders.
Advertising for the Election Access Fund is ongoing including on social media. Media placement
includes radio, digital, and community newspapers throughout the country.
Election integrity communications
A communications plan for electoral integrity outlining our communications activity to maintain
trust and confidence in the electoral process was discussed and endorsed with the Board. This
work is aligned with activity led by the Deputy Chief Electoral Officer on integrity, security and
trust and confidence in the election.
Editing work is underway on videos from the voting place walkthrough, which was filmed in early
May in Wellington. The videos will help to demystify the voting experience for first time voters.
The video covers what to expect when you get to a voting place and how to vote. A collection of
still photos were also taken for external and internal use and are now published on the
elections.nz: Image gallery | Elections
A new page titled, Facts about New Zealand elections addressing common misconceptions has
been developed with input from legal and policy and voting services and will be published on the
website in early June. This page will be a place where we can address any inaccurate information
we see in the lead up to the election. It will also be the source for proactive social media posts
around electoral integrity.
Media
Page 4 of 6
Media coverage of the Māori Electoral Option in May focused on the changes in roll numbers, with
media noting that more people were changing to the Māori roll than the general roll. There was
also a focus on the efforts of the Commission to connect with people living in areas impacted by
recent weather events who might have had to move house. The main media outlets running
stories on the Option are the Herald, Radio Waatea, and regional papers including the Gisborne
Herald and Wairoa Star.
Election coverage is well underway and political polls, potential coalition arrangements, the
Budget and the cost of living, were all big stories in May.
Election stories that touched on the role of the Commission include regular updates on how much
parties are receiving in donations. Stories are based on the donations disclosed on elections.nz.
The use of AI technology to generate content for election advertising was the topic of much
debate, as well as the potential for the technology to be used for the spread of misinformation.
We had high numbers of media enquiries on this topic and used the opportunity to clarify the role
of the Commission in overseeing election advertising.
TVNZ ran a story questioning the use of PersolKelly as a recruitment agency for a small number of
specialist roles. The agency is at the centre of a dispute with a group of former Census workers.
The Herald has reported that NZ Outdoors & Freedom Party, Freedoms NZ and Vision NZ are
mounting a legal challenge to the broadcasting allocation.
Social media
Social media posts about the Māori Electoral Option continue to attract both positive and negative
comments, which are being moderated and responded to where appropriate.
Racism and separatism are ongoing themes in public comments on our pages along with questions
around the percentage of Māori blood required to be considered Māori and transphobic
commentary around people ‘identifying’ as Māori. These are reasonably steady in volume, and any
comments that breach our terms of use are hidden from public view and not engaged with.
There have been discussions around funding (or lack thereof) for disabled people and the
differences in support levels for different types and origins of disabilities in response to paid posts
around the Election Access Fund.
We have seen an increase in the number of general questions about advertising – whether it is
allowed yet, when it is allowed, where it can be posted, etc. We expect these to increase as we get
closer to the election.
Our Facebook reach was up 7% over May compared with April, and our Instagram reach was up
3.1%. (Reach is the number of accounts that saw any content from our Page, or about our Page,
including posts, stories, ads, social information, and more. Reach is different from impressions,
which may include multiple views of our posts by the same accounts. This metric is estimated.)
In May, we had 70 new Facebook page likes, and 58 new Instagram followers. Overall, we
currently have 46,640 Facebook followers, and 2,769 Instagram followers.
Page 5 of 6
Overall, our impressions were up 23.7% in May. Impressions are the number of times our content
was displayed to users, including those who don’t follow us (e.g. through paid or sponsored posts).
Websites
We continue to support Legal & Policy with the development of the Candidate Hub on
elections.nz, which will provide a single clear destination for candidates seeking to contest the
2023 General Election (and any subsequent events). The Hub is due to be launched on 6 June.
Development of a mapping tool to enhance the Careers Website is almost complete with
implementation expected in early June.
Discussions continue with IT about a potential reskinning of the election results website. A
suggested design has been developed for further conversation with Catalyst.
Other progress
Issues under management
•
Leave plans are being developed for enrolment staff with high leave balances
Other news
•
Senior Advisor Learning and Development for GE2023, Denise McGrath, started with
Business Enablement on 15th May
•
Manager Business Enablement completed the CIMS 3 and 4 training in May and is picking up
the Incident Controller role from Dean Shirley.
•
Enrolment responded to a significant OIA request,
Withheld under s.9(2)(a)
Page 6 of 6
• Reporting errors have been identified in the internal Māori Electoral Option (MEO) Tableau
dashboard and are being remedied in consultation with an external provider. The errors
resulted from an underlying table duplicating entries. Corrections were issued to the media
providers and the Iwi Chairs Forum.
Other news
•
Kristin Leslie, Manager, Strategy Risk & Assurance, joined the team on 8 May.
•
Recruitment is underway for a Senior Advisor Accountability, to join the strategy risk and
assurance team.
Page 2 of 2
