Aucklanders will be voting at booths in the 2028 local elections after councillors agreed to ditch the postal voting system following ballot fraud concerns.
By Torika Tokalau of Local Democracy Reporting
Auckland Council’s Governing Body met on Tuesday to decide the voting method for the 2028 local elections, and voted 13 to three for in-person voting.
This comes after claims of vote rigging and ballot theft at the Ōtara-Papatoetoe and Manurewa local boards in the 2025 local elections. Low voter turnout was also a challenge.
The Governing Body’s vote to bring back in-person voting for the next local elections means Auckland becomes the first council in New Zealand to use voting booths since 1992.
During discussions, cost was one of the biggest concerns raised by councillors.
According to staff, postal voting would cost ratepayers $16 million while booth voting would cost $39m for a 10- or 20-day election, or both methods for $48.1m.
This could be up to $70m for a one-day booth election if both voting methods were chosen.
Mayor Wayne Brown and deputy mayor Desley Simpson recommended councillors vote on booth voting with a maximum $20m cost.
“This is the middle ground solution, there are people who want both booth voting and there are other people who don’t want to waste too much money,” Brown said.
“And it is possible to have your cake and eat it here, it is possible we can do booth voting without a dramatic increase in costs.”
Staff said reducing the booth method to $20m would be difficult to achieve.
Council chief executive Phil Wilson reminded the Governing Body the vote on the table was mostly because of concerns about the integrity of the system, and partly because of voter turnout.
“I don’t think you can presume that moving to booth voting’s necessarily in itself, going to change or improve voter turnout,” Wilson said.
“Importantly, there are additional costs coming through for postal voting anyway so the baseline here is not the costs as they have been, but the cost that we will experience going forward.
“And it will get worse because the postal voting system has, as you know, less a part of our lives.”
He said staff couldn’t promise a booth voting system for $20m.
“But we understand that you’re trying to balance a concern about the integrity of the system with reasonable cost and the ability to deliver it.
“So I am very comfortable that if you agree, we will make best endeavours to do this at the lowest cost and take the $20m as an indicator.”
Franklin ward councillor Andy Baker voted against booth voting, raising concerns about how it would work for rural areas.
He said the cost was too much, and wanted council to enhance the voting method already in place.
Greg Sayers from the Rodney Ward also voted against it, predicting even lower voter turnout for the rural areas.
'Real challenge of integrity' in previous election
Albert-Eden- Puketāpapa councillor Julie Fairey, who supported booth voting, said there was a lot of discussion around cost but not much on why a change was needed.
“The integrity added by booth is worth even paying the higher sum that is in the paper. We’ve had a real challenge of integrity in the last election,” Fairey said.
Manukau councillor Lotu Fuli said allegations of voter fraud were not limited only to south Auckland, but across the region.
“We’ve been hearing about this sort of thing for decades, we’ve been hearing about the fragility of postal vote and votes being cast for others or stolen, or not turning up in people’s letter boxes.”
Councillors Sarah Paterson-Hamlin, Ken Turner, John Watson, Josephine Bartley, Bo Burns, Christine Fletcher, John Gillon, Victoria Short, Maurice Williamson and Richard Hills also threw their support behind booth voting.
“Cost is the cost, and I don’t think it is, you know, cost of living versus democracy,” Hills said.
“I don’t think the suffragists were out there going, ‘it’s pretty expensive out there, we’ll wait another few years before we sort out our voting system’.”
Simpson said Tuesday’s vote was about integrity, cost and accessibility.
She said the cost of using a ballot method was only $4m more than the postal method.
‘Trust is gone’
Earlier in the day, councillors heard from Auckland’s five licensing trusts and the Ōtara-Papatoetoe their input on the voting method.
Ōtara-Papatoetoe chair Apulu Reece Autagavaia said postal voting may have worked in the past, but it would not work now.
“For Papatoetoe, that trust is gone,” Autagavaia said.
Following the 2025 local body elections, complaints were made about voter fraud for the Papatoetoe subdivision, with a petition filed seeking a judicial inquiry into the election.
A judge later ruled that irregularities had materially affected the result and declared the election of the local board members for the Papatoetoe subdivision void, prompting a by-election.
Autagavaia said the voting system should be changed because the system was broken.
“Some unknown persons took advantage of our people, already suffering under the worst cost of living crisis and decided to steal their democratic right of voting.
“Someone decided to vote for them and fraudulently speak on their behalf.”
He said Auckland needed a voting method system that restored public trust and confidence in results.
Staff will report back on options for reducing costs in December, with final funding requirements to be considered as part of Auckland Council's long-term plan 2027-2037 process.
- LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.
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