Mike's Minute: We changed the election laws because we're hopeless - The Mike Hosking Breakfast

If you want to get a bit angsty about the voting changes, the one everyone seems to have missed is the one about how it's being changed because we are so hopeless. 

On the “disenfranchised” side of the equation, I have little, if any, time for it. 

An election is held every three years. Between the last one and the next one that’s a lot of days to, at some point, stick your name down for another crack. 

The fact you can't rock up on the day is only going to “disenfranchise” you if you are a bit disorganised. 

Everyone loves a conspiracy theory so a few jumped on the old "it will favour the right" line. It won't. 

But here is the bigger question: why can't you enrol on the day? Because we can't cope. 

Why can't we cope? Because we are a small island backwater with a technological mentality to go with it. 

I asked Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith last week why we aren't like the Germans. The German elections have their results as the polls close. Watch them next time, it's awesome. 

We don’t, he said, because they're efficient. Why aren't we efficient? He laughed, as well he might. 

Elections, technologically, are the thing time forgot. Years back we talked of phones and votes and electronic registration. None of it has happened and none of it will. 

We can't conduct a Census properly, we make a marae a polling station where the CEO is also the candidate and we still have rules being changed around food and drink, despite the fact that got first raised as an issue 100 years ago when they called it treating. 

We have mail votes at local body elections, despite the fact no one uses mail, so the post office is besides themselves. 

Our rules around political donations are constantly tinkered with. 

Elections just appear a bit hard for us. It's true there are issues elsewhere - we don’t seem to have the waiting times many do, we are corruption free, and participation is high. 

But the fact you can't execute a fairly simple and logical idea like same-day registration does remind you that when it comes to modern day efficiency, it's not a “disenfranchising” scandal that did us in. 

It's the gliding-on nature of how we run things. 

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