Local Election Guide 2022
Handy links to vote climate in this year's local elections
Voting is now open for the 2022 Local Elections! You’ll receive your voting papers in the mail by the 21st of September 💌 (and if you don’t, you can still cast a special vote), which will include a return envelope with the postage already paid.
Postal voting is now closed (last day was 4 October 2022) but you can still drop your voting papers off at ballot boxes in selected locations by midday Saturday 8 October, or cast a special vote if you don’t have voting papers - here’s a list of locations for every local council around the country! (Thank you India Logan-Riley and Louise Hutt for this resource)
We’ve been blessed with quite a few community resources out there for the local elections this year! The resources below will help you get familiar with the candidates, and help you do your bit for Aotearoa and your local community.
General info on how to vote can be found on the official Vote Local website.
👋🏽 Candidate Profiles
Don’t know what region, council, or roles you’re voting for? Start here at The Spinoff’s Policy.nz website, where you can enter your address (they don’t store the data) and it gives you all the info you need👇
Policy.nz
Regions: All
Focus: General summary of candidates’ broader policies and priorities
What it is: Spinoff’s Policy website is a great way to get a look at a candidate’s general profile with a short intro, their top priorities, and their background. It also lets you easily compare policies across topics of interest (e.g. climate change, housing, transport, community), and even lets you hide names to avoid bias & summarise who you align best with at the end.
✅ Candidate Surveys
A number of community organisations have put together surveys to score candidates on how likely they are to contribute positively towards a particular focus, like climate change, or housing. These are a great way to get an idea of who you’d like to look into further. Once you’ve got some names, you can look them up online to get a better idea of their other views and previous track record.
Generation Zero Vote Local
Regions: Auckland, Canterbury, Wellington
Focus: Climate justice
What it is: GenZero’s scorecards survey candidates and give them a score across their policies on the five themes of transport, housing, environment, equity, and Te Tiriti.
Vote Climate
Regions: All
Focus: Climate action through reducing transport emissions
What it is: VoteClimate’s candidate scorecards focus on candidates’ policies for climate action through reducing transport emissions. Each candidate has been given a score across four asks: more public transport, more often, more affordable public transport, safer walking & cycling, and more inter-city and regional public transport.
Rail Coalition
Regions: All
Focus: Rail
What it is: The NZ Rail Coalition has a list of pro-rail candidates and candidate bios for each of them.
Renters United
Regions: Auckland, Christchurch, Wellington
Focus: Health homes, tenancy advocacy, more homes
What it is: Renters United asked candidates 17 questions to scope out how their candidacy could affect the lives of renters. Each candidate is given a score to show whether they are likely to make the lives of renters better (or worse). Housing justice is closely tied to climate action!
ECAN Candidate Survey
Region: Canterbury
Focus: Biodiversity, equity, and phasing out synthetic nitrogen fertiliser
What it is: The Greenpeace ECAN candidate survey is a spreadsheet showing candidate responses to questions about protecting biodiversity, considering equity when increasing rates, and phasing out synthetic nitrogen filters.
Green Party-endorsed candidates
Region: All
Focus: All
What it is: Climate Club backs any political party with good climate policy, and we’re impressed with the Green Party’s commitment to advocating for urgent action. They’ve created a quick tool that shows local candidates in your area that they endorse.
🙅🏽♀️ Cautionary Tales
Scorecards and surveys are a quick overview of candidates’ positions on topics. They don’t tell the full picture - some candidates that score highly in one area could have harmful views in another area, and other candidates who could be really good might not feature at all because they didn’t fill out the survey.
What’s more, unfortunately there are a significant number of candidates this election with ties to conspiracy groups. Many of these candidates are being intentionally vague about what they support while campaigning to make it hard to pick them out. This is part of a concerted effort by alt-right groups to make Aotearoa “ungovernable”.
So once you have an idea of who you’d like to vote for based on the above tools, it’s particularly important to take a few minutes to look into each candidate’s backgrounds before voting. This might include checking out their social media, searching their name online, seeing how they voted or what work they’ve done if they’ve been elected before, or looking through Stuff’s very helpful Election Transparency section where they identify candidates with links to alt-right groups.
Happy voting! If you’re already clear on who you’re voting for, the next step is to get your friends and whānau involved and encourage them to vote too. Let us know if you’ve found any other helpful resources in the comments below 👇