The Māori electoral roll grew by more than 3000 people after organisers of the hīkoi mō te Tiriti promoted a switch from the general roll. But it may make sense for some to switch back again, argues Katrina Smit, to enable more strategic voting. (Photo: Layla Bailey-McDowell/RNZ)
When it comes to choosing an electoral roll, there might be a surprising strategic choice for Māori this election, writes Katrina Smit.
In the early 1990s, when I was flatting in Grey Lynn, I voted for Sandra Lee in the general election and felt the power of my vote when she was elected to parliament. I then decided to move to the Māori roll to help increase the number of Māori seats.
The Māori seats and the existence of a parallel electoral roll are unique features of our electoral system. Legislation to create four seats to represent Māori was passed in 1867, although, based on the population at the time, true representation would have meant up to 20 seats.
Since then, there’s been ongoing debate and several changes to the legislation regarding the seats and the Māori roll. In 1986, the Royal Commission on the Electoral System recommended abolishing the Māori seats if the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) voting system was adopted, believing that MMP would inherently produce a more representative, diverse parliament. But when MMP was introduced after a binding referendum in 1993, the Māori seats were retained.
Three years later, a fifth Māori seat was added to reflect the growing Māori population, in time for the first MMP election in 1996. By 2002, in line with population growth, there were seven Māori seats.
That number hasn’t changed since then — it remains at seven for the 2026 general election.
Once on the Māori roll, I never thought about changing. It made sense to me that the more the Māori population grew, the more seats we’d have in parliament. So having a separate Māori roll felt like something we had to protect. Until last week, I’d spent the past 30 years on the Māori electoral roll.
A couple of things have happened that make me believe that switching back to the general roll is an opportunity to make better use of my vote.
Firstly, the number of Māori seats is fixed at seven until at least 2032, regardless of how many voters are on the Māori roll. That’s because the government has changed the way the census is done, and the census survey had previously been the trigger for calculating the number of Māori seats.
With the approach to the census changing, new legislation decouples the calculation of Māori seats from the census process. The planned Electoral (District Boundaries) Amendment Bill requires a review every six years, starting in 2030.
This provides us with an opportunity.
The changes mean that even if enrolment numbers change, there will still be seven Māori seats in the 2026 and 2029 elections. The number of seats won’t go up, but importantly, it won’t go down either, regardless of how many people are on the roll. (Even if the bill did not pass, the existing census is not due until 2030, so the number of Māori seats for the next two elections is fixed at seven either way.)
Secondly, a law change in 2023 means the choice to change rolls can now be made at any time. The Māori Electoral Option gives all enrolled voters of Māori descent the option to choose which electoral roll to be on — the general roll or the Māori roll. It used to be that this choice could only be exercised every five years, during a four-month period after the census.
Now, if you’re Māori, you can change rolls at any time, except in the three months before a general or local body election. There’s also no limit to the number of times you can change. No matter which roll you’re on, you still have only two votes, like all New Zealanders — your electorate vote and your party vote.
So, to make my electorate vote count this election, I’m switching from the Māori roll to the general roll and staying there for the 2026 and 2029 elections. I’ll then probably switch back to the Māori roll for the 2032 election to ensure we increase the number of Māori seats. But I can make that decision closer to the time to ensure I use my electoral option strategically.
Why change now? I believe the way I vote in this election can and will affect the future of Aotearoa. To quote Barack Obama: “Cynicism is the guardian of the status quo — organising is the antidote.”
I’ve lived in the Hutt Valley for 24 years, and during that time I’ve voted in the Ikaroa-Rāwhiti electorate because I was on the Māori roll. At the last election, the main contest was between Labour and Te Pāti Māori candidates, with a few thousand votes separating them. If you voted for either candidate, the result, as in all the Māori seats, would be a victory for the left.
But in the general electorate I live in, Hutt South, it’s a completely different story. Here, it’s a two-horse race between the National and Labour candidates — and at the last election, National won by only 1332 votes.
The number of voters who live in the Hutt South electorate who are on the Māori roll is 4416 (maybe 4415 since I shifted). That number is a lot higher than the 1332 votes that separated the National and Labour candidates in the last election. Because I can now change my electoral roll at any time, I’m able to vote more strategically. If enough Māori do the same, it could significantly affect the outcome in my area at the next election.
It’s important to remember that whatever roll you’re on, your party vote isn’t affected. This is about strategically using your ability to choose between rolls in the general electorates.
And it doesn’t just apply to Hutt South. It’s worth taking the time to understand the contest in each electorate. Other electorates where the margin between National and Labour was less than 5 percent in the last election include Mt Roskill, West Coast Tasman, New Lynn, and Banks Peninsula. Slightly bigger but still marginal were East Coast (8 percent) and Wairarapa (6.4 percent).
Making this decision is about being organised and mobilising to support the things we care about. For me, the change is about using my vote to try to secure a government that might honour Te Tiriti and enable an equitable Aotearoa where everyone has enough to thrive.
The key date this year is August 6. After this date, you won’t be able to switch before the election. So if you want to switch, you’ll need to do it now.
Enrol or update online | Vote NZ
Katrina Smit (Ngāti Kahungunu ki te Wairoa) is the co-director of a newly established social innovation agency, Future. By Design. Her work champions Indigenous ways of doing and being to create equitable outcomes. She has a master’s degree in social change leadership from Melbourne University and is a global fellow of the Atlantic Institute, a fellowship focused on social justice and based at Oxford University.
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I don’t think we can emphasise enough that only the party vote counts towards how many MPs a party wins. Your electorate vote will not affect who forms the government although it may displace a list candidate. There are many voters who think their electorate vote will give the party an extra seat but it won’t. It may be nice to have an electorate MP from the party you support, but it is irrelevant in terms of who forms the government. The only party that can improve its chances of forming the government by electorate MPs is Te Pāti Māori as they can elect more MPs than the number their party vote entitles them to. It is called overhang. Once your electorate MP gets to Wellington, they are a cipher for their party. When is the last time an MP crossed the floor?
What is the main purpose of an MP, list or electorate? Surely their focus will be on supporting the government programme on the major issues, the economy, health, education, energy, the environment, etc. They may try to win favours for their electorate, a new school, a new bridge, but is this really the role of an MP? I understand people can appreciate their electorate MP is hard working, getting to know people, attending local events, but is that really the role of an MP?
Transferring from the Maori roll to the General roll so you can vote for an electorate candidate from the party you support will have no effect on which party forms the government; only your party vote does that. At least on the Maori roll, you can be sure your electorate MP is Maori and may increase the number of Maori MPs in parliament.
I would like to see the media paying more attention to who the list candidates are, especially on the smaller parties. As we have learned in the last 3 years, it is the smaller coalition partners who can influence the government programme. Perhaps looking at the policies of the smaller parties will give you more chance to influence the coalition government policy. Above all, being certain which of the 2 larger parties a smaller party will go into coalition with is important
Electorate votes are still important, particularly in the Maori seats, because they are constituencies in which there is a real and direct connection between the representative and the constituent, without a party organisation interposing between the two. Frankly, it does not much matter how many members of parliament are of Maori descent. It matters much more that all members of the legislature should be directly accountable to their constituents. In the Maori seats, hapu, iwi and marae structures provide a means for voters to exercise a continuing influence over their representatives. Because the connections are informal (that is to say, they have no formal recognition within the Westminster system of government) they are by no means perfect but they still make the Maori seats in practice more democratic than the other 116 or so other seats in the New Zealand parliament.
That is something that voters need to consider when deciding whether to switch from the Maori roll to the general roll.
Even if it is true that “It may be nice to have an electorate MP from the party you support, but it is irrelevant in terms of who forms the government” one could reply that “It may be nice to have .. a party you support, but it is irrelevant in terms of who forms the government policy”. As we all should know, the fact is that corporate lobbyists and foreign powers dictate the course of all colonialist governments. Is it not better to have people in the parliamentary opposition who actually represent you (more or less) than people in government who do not represent you?
Where can I find a breakdown of the areas that would be best to switch electoral roll? I’m in Te Tai Hauāuru.
Thank you, Katrina, You’ve raised some important points. I keep circling back to the same tricky questions: what actually inspires us to get out and vote? Whose economy are we protecting? Whose values get prioritised? Who even gets to claim ownership of the Treaty? And honestly… what on earth is going on in Wellington.
We’re hearing more executive brainrot from the Beehive than ever, with a steady stream of projected bullshit rolling down the steps and out the gates of Parliament. And somehow the media’s “fact‑checking” always loops back to the same handful of interest groups who never seem to lose.
You know we’re in trouble when the courts, the very place where ideas should be tested for solid reasoning get sidelined because they don’t fit CEO Luxon’s short‑term management plan. Just last week the corporate suspects basically outed themselves. And what does the government do? Exactly what Fonterra and friends paid for. So here we are: ministers arrogantly neutering the courts, laws changed to fit the highest bidder, and the rest of us will be left paying the clean up bills from the primary sector runoffs.
Nek minnit, breaking news. Turns out we’ve basically been sublet as America’s latest no‑frills territory. Their rules, their sovereignty, their AI taking over our overpriced power grids and watch out for disappearing bank funds when you piss them off. As for our budget, she proudly confirmed we can’t afford the new tariffs anyway.
You guessed it, Katrina. What’s our dream? Because we deserve better. Waikato Tainui’s blueprint stretches fifty years into the future. China’s seven‑generation masterplan looks even further. Over half of their national power supply 80% comes from clean renewables. That’s enough electricity to run the country and AI grids very efficiently. By the 2030s, the global clean‑energy commerce is expected to hit seven trillion dollars. They’re light years ahead of America by comparison, and already running full‑scale future cities that look like the Jetsons built them not prototypes, but live systems. Flying‑car corridors, AI transit grids, autonomous logistics hubs, nationwide drone delivery, massive EV fleets, and hydrogen‑powered buses, trucks, vans, and next‑gen cars. These aren’t dreams; they’re exporting real tech today.
Meanwhile, we’re still acting like we’re stuck in some ice‑age warlord era. Everyone is guarding their little patch. Arguing over council boundaries, rate rises, and imaginary co‑governance monsters. No long‑term strategies and no politicians driving decades‑long master plans. And if we don’t politically grow, we won’t just fall behind, we’ll miss the century‑defining shift happening right in front of us. America, for its part, is still running two things: export wars and import profit from global tariffs.
So when you’re looking to vote, I agree with Katrina, make it count. Judge manifestos by the outcomes you want to see. I’m talking about breathable air, affordable kai, access to justice, healthcare that works for everyone, electricity bills that don’t punish families, real public housing options for tangata whenua, clean rivers, and a constitutional backbone for te Tiriti. Those are real outcomes you can confidently tick the box on. Life‑changing things that show whether leadership is working or not. The fix isn’t complicated. The kind of manifesto worth ticking is one built on outcomes and actual care for people, the economy, and the whenua. If a government can’t pass that muster test, why would we put them in government?
Kia ora.
For someone with definite political opinions there may be small tactical advantages to switching rolls and constituencies so as to have the maximum impact upon the result of a general election. However, taking the longer view, a constituency should be the place where one feels that one truly belongs. In a genuine democracy we would all be able to nominate our own constituency (for example our own hapu) and there would be no “winners” or “losers” (no “wasted votes”), and thus no need to engage in this kind of tactical voting, which, let’s face it, is not what democracy should be all about.
If democracy isn’t about tactical voting, do you think people should just vote randomly, or emotionally, or for whoever makes the biggest promises no matter how unfeasible? It’s our duty to vote tactically within the system such as it ever is for the best outcome we can possibly get for everyone and our natural systems and planet in our (hopefully informed) world view.
Democracy is the antithesis of tactical voting.
In an authentic democracy (such as rangatiratanga) you get the leader of your choice. You don’t have to settle for second best, as a tactical voter. Genuine democracy is not a contest in which you seek to outsmart others and impose upon them your own choice of leader, representative or ruler. In a democracy you get the representative of your choosing. Period. There are no “winners” and no “losers”. No one to boast “We won, you lost, eat that” in the infamous words of Sir Michael Cullen.
We have no “duty” to participate within the colonialist system, and certainly no duty to do so through “tactical voting” which really amounts to a surrender of the first principle of democracy: the people’s right (which means the right of every community and every single individual) to choose their own representatives and to have that choice validated by the system.
We do have choices. We can choose not to participate in the colonialist system. Or we can choose to loyally support a candidate or a party with whom we identify, regardless of whether the pseudo-democratic Westminster system deems our choice to be invalid.
However the most sensible choice is to reject the institutions of colonialism and to embrace rangatiratanga as the only truly democratic form of governance.
I should add that there is a distinction between voting intelligently and voting tactically. If people are going to vote they should vote intelligently. Tactical voters may be intelligent, but by definition they accept political or moral compromises that they should not be demanded of anyone.