Information for Voters

You can enrol as a resident if you:

• Are 18 years or older
• Are a New Zealand Citizen or permanent resident
• Have lived in New Zealand continuously for 12 months or more at some time in your life.

If you’re unsure where to enrol, you can enrol at the address where you spend a substantial part of your time. You can also enrol at the last residential address where you lived for at least 1 month, even if that was some time ago.

Choosing between General or Māori roll -

If you’re Māori, you can choose to enrol on the General roll or the Māori roll.

The Tararua District is divided into three wards - two geographic wards (North and South), and the Tamaki-Nui-a-Rua Māori ward.

Māori Roll voters elect a Māori Ward councillor, and General Roll voters elect General Ward councillors in their geographic area.

For the 2025 local elections, the last day you could change between rolls is 10 July 2025. Both residents and non-resident ratepayers can be on the Māori roll.

You can enrol to vote or update your enrolment details at vote.nz. Enrolling is easy to do – it takes 30 seconds to do online.

Enrol online on the Electoral Commission website

You can also:

• email enrol@vote.nz
• call 0800 36 76 56, or
• freetext your name and address to 3676

For the 2025 Local Elections, the last day to enrol to cast an ordinary vote was 1 August 2025.

You could enrol after this date (up until 10 October 2025), and then you would cast a special vote.

Sometimes you might need to cast what’s called a ‘special vote’. You will need to do this if:

• You didn’t receive your voting forms in your letterbox after 22 September
• You lost or damaged your voting forms
• You enrolled after 1 August 2025
• You are on the unpublished (confidential) electoral roll
• Your enrolled address is out of date, and you have been living at a new address for a month or more