Several select committees have conducted hearings during the recess, notably the justice committee.
Last Friday saw the clash that all electoral law geeks have been waiting for: University of Otago professor Andrew Geddis versus the Electoral Amendment Bill.
Suffice to say, he knows his onions and if he takes issue with any part of amending the Electoral Act — as, in this case, he quite forcefully has — it would pay to take notice.
The Bill recommends a suite of changes to electoral laws, including revamping party financial reporting requirements and party registration processes and starching up the "treating" rules.
What Geddis specifically wished to tackle, though, was voter enrolment procedures. In a heavyweight bout scheduled for 12 rounds — well, in a routine submission lasting five minutes — Geddis first took on the Bill’s proposed restrictions on enrolment of new voters during an election period.
The government, in the name of speeding up the counting of votes on election night, has proposed that voter enrolment be closed well in advance of polling day, hopefully reducing the number of special votes needing to be verified and counted subsequently.
In his written submission Geddis expressed serious doubts that this was really an issue, noting that parties could negotiate based on election night results — the decision by any party not to do so was entirely up to it.
But for his in person submission, Geddis focused on a potential pitfall with another new provision in the Bill: introduction of the ability of the Electoral Commission to change someone’s electorate enrolment details without the individual asking them to.
At the moment, the commission sends voting update reminders to people’s last known addresses, even if it is fairly certain they no longer live there. At some places Southern Say has lived, electoral mail has arrived for people who have not dwelled there for a decade.
The law change, if enacted, would allow the commission to automatically update addresses if it had compelling evidence that they had changed — which Geddis supports.
But should that change be a mistake — the scenario Geddis gave was of a university student at Otago who resides in Epsom, and wishes for that to continue to be their residence, but is instead automatically enrolled in the Dunedin electorate — there is no way to change back during the voting period.
And therein lay the problem vexing Geddis this day. Quite apart from his lack of confidence that the average student could find their way to a letterbox to check their mail — an observation which drew plenty of laughter from the committee — Geddis was also concerned that the notification issue would result in many voters heading to their nearest polling place thinking that they were about to vote in electorate A, only to be told that they now lived in electorate B, hence curbing their electoral rights.
More chillingly, Geddis said, the proposed change and its potential for disallowing people from voting in what they considered to be "their" electorate could result in electoral petitions if, in a close election, the number of voters unwittingly, unwillingly or wrongfully transferred out of their electorate was in the vicinity of the winning margin.
"No-one wants the courts deciding the result of an election," he said, as the committee members nodded earnestly.
"Making this wrong even worse," he pointed out in his written submission, "is that the votes of the affected electors predictably favour certain political parties. And these political parties currently make up a parliamentary minority, meaning that reducing the votes they may receive at the next election will make it harder for them to replace the current governing majority.
"As such, what subpart one represents is a current governing majority changing electoral law in a way that will benefit their chances of being re-elected ... I invite the committee to consider whether this really is the appropriate way to set the electoral rules of our country."
Also in his written submission, Geddis tackled his other bugbear with the Bill, the political football of prisoner voting.
This has been kicked back and forth between left and right for several years; the left believes that voting is a right which no-one should ever be deprived of, while the right believes it is a privilege and that once you are convicted of an imprisonable offence you should lose that right.
A National-led government, controversially and against Bill of Rights objections, stripped prisoners of the vote, only for the last Labour-led government to restore them. The tide has changed and a law change is imminent, despite the best efforts of Geddis and many others to effect a Canute-like halt to it.
"It is disappointing that this tired old issue has been resurrected in an attempt to position the governing majority as being appropriately tough on crime," he wrote, before reiterating such hardy objections as its arbitrariness — for example, an offender whose 30-month sentence ends just before an election will be able to vote, whereas someone in jail for a month which encompasses election day will not.
The other, better example Geddis gave was of two offenders convicted of similar offences, but one receives a term of home detention while the other is imprisoned. One gets to vote; the other does not.
"This arbitrary removal of the right to vote means that, if enacted, Parliament will be legislating to impose a rights limit that cannot be justified. That’s an abdication of the legislator’s responsibility," he wrote.
"No matter how ‘popular’ this measure may seem, or whatever its superficial ‘common sense’ appeal, this committee’s job is to subject the proposal to some rigorous policy scrutiny and to consider what it means for a country to be committed to the concept of individual rights."
