Electoral law changes
Parliament has passed changes to make electoral law and administration more robust and effective in advance of the 2026 general election.
The Electoral Amendment Bill received its third reading on 16 December 2025. Most of the law will come into force on the day after it receives Royal Assent from the Governor-General, although some provisions related to the registration of political parties, disclosure of party donations, and electoral advertisements will come into force on 1 January 2026.
The Bill makes several changes to the Electoral Act 1993 (the Act) aimed at improving the timeliness, efficient, integrity and resilience of elections and their operation by the Electoral Commission (the Commission).
Key changes are:
- The last day to enrol to vote will be 13 days before election day to allow the Commission to complete enrolment processing before election day.
- Reinstating a prisoner voting disqualification for prisoners sentenced to less than three years for offences committed after the Bill takes effect, which extends the current ban for prisoners sentenced to more than three years.
- Enabling the Commission to undertake automatic enrolment updates by using government date to update address information on electoral rolls.
- Removing mandatory postal requirements to enable the Commission to contact voters digitally, either by email or text message.
- Removing occupation and preferred honorific from enrolment information collected while requiring an email address and phone number to be provided, to assist the Commission in contacting voters and encouraging them to vote.
- Setting in law an advance voting period of 12 calendar days before election day.
- Creating a new offence to prohibit the provision of free food, drink or entertainment within 100m of the entrance of a voting place while voting is taking place
- Extending the existing offences of bribery, treating and undue influence to include improperly influencing an elector not to enrol or to enrol on a particular roll.
- Automatically adjusting for inflation, the amount of money candidates, parties and third-party promoters can spend in election.
- Expanding the membership of the Commission’s Board from three members to up to seven.
- Increasing the threshold for disclosing the identify of donors to $6,000 (from $5,000) and extending the timeframe to report donations of more than $20,000 to 20 days (from 10 days) in an election year.
- A range of changes affecting political parties and candidates including bringing forward the date for party registrations and setting a single deadline for candidate nominations.
- Expanding the contact details that can be included on promoter statements (e.g., on election advertisements and promotional material) so physical addresses do not need to be provided.
The law also amends the Juries Act 1981, and the Jury Rules 1990, as the Commission will no longer collect, or provide, occupation information to the Ministry of Justice for the preparation of jury lists.
The media statement from the Minister of Justice, Hon Paul Goldsmith, on the Bill’s third reading: Electoral reforms pass final reading | Beehive.govt.nz(external link)
The Ministry of Justice has also proactively published on its website a range of Official Information Act responses and other information about the Electoral Matters Bill. (external link)
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