Have you been turned away from a polling place? Newsroom wants to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with ‘Voting Changes’ in the subject line.
More than 68,000 people have already voted in the 2026 election, after the first day of advance voting came to a close on Monday.
That is higher – slightly – than the 65,845 voters who cast a ballot on the first day of early voting in 2023, despite concerns that the Labour Day public holiday would depress turnout.
Unlike in 2023 and other past elections, prospective voters are no longer able to enrol to vote once advance voting begins. This has sparked accusations of voter suppression and concerns that tens of thousands of people could be turned away at the polls.
The final enrolment tally won’t land until Thursday, but provisional data from the Electoral Commission on Tuesday put the number of those not yet enrolled at nearly 300,000.
While the Electoral Commission is counting early votes and enrolment numbers, it won’t be tracking how many people show up to vote but are turned away because they aren’t enrolled, as Newsroom reported in August.
Labour Party campaign chair Kieran McAnulty raised concerns last week about the number of people who could be prevented from voting.
“There’s going to be a lot of people that find out that they can’t vote because of the changes that the Government has made. They will walk into that booth with full expectation that they’ll be able to do like they have done previously: Enroll and vote at the same time,” he said.
“400,000 people did that last election, and I don’t think 400,000 people have got enrolled in time. So there’s going to be a lot of people that have been prevented from taking part in this election.”
Have you been turned away from a polling place? Newsroom wants to hear from you. Email us at [email protected] with “Voting Changes” in the subject line.