John MacDonald: Here's how to get more people voting in local body elections - Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

You can call me a nerd, if you want to. But I reckon there is nothing like the performance of walking down to your local polling booth on voting day and casting your vote.

The way we do every three years when we’re electing a Government. In the general election.

There’s no confusion. It’s well-publicised. You can do early voting, if you want to or need to. But we all know, don’t we, that when we wake up on a particular Saturday morning every three years - we know it’s voting day.

Not so straightforward, though, when it comes to voting for our local council. Which, let’s face it, actually has more sway over our daily lives than central Government.

And I think we need to merge the general election with local body elections, which I’ll get to shortly.

But, for some reason, in the spirit of trying to make it easier for us to vote in our local elections, we’ve actually made it more difficult.

And this is something Local Government New Zealand wants to try and sort out. It wants to get more of our voting in the elections for our local councils.

I reckon the pitiful voter turnout - compared to general elections - largely comes down to the fact that you can pretty much vote when you want in local body elections. Well, within a voting period. But you can do it when it suits you.

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