Let's not open the gate to US-style voter disenfranchisement

Let's not open the gate to US-style voter disenfranchisement

There was a time when worrying about voting rights in New Zealand seemed like a quaint concern. Following a seminar during my undergraduate studies at Otago in the late 2000s, I can remember questioning an Electoral Commission official about increasing Republican hostility towards ‘get out the vote’ campaigns in the US.  Wasn’t there a risk, if potential non-voters in New Zealand similarly tended towards particular demographics, that some politi…