The local body elections are just around the corner, giving us the chance to decide who will represent our community at the Council table for the next three years.
For Porirua City, this includes the Mayor, Porirua Māori Ward and four Pāuatahanui Ward Councillors. At the Greater Wellington Regional Council level, we’ll also be choosing two Councillors for the Porirua-Tawa Ward.
The Pukerua Bay Residents Association has already hosted a “Meet the Candidate” session, and we encourage you to head along to one of the public meetings. These are a great way to hear directly from the candidates and ask questions.
Who is standing?
You can find out more about the Mayor, Māori Ward candidates and Pāuatahanui Ward Councillor candidates here:
Information on the Greater Wellington Regional Council candidates for our ward can be found here:
‘Meet the Candidate’ meetings
We’ve already held our Pukerua Bay “Meet the candidates” meeting but other local events are coming up. Times and venues details are available here:
Māori Wards
In the voting papers you will also be asked if you want to keep the Porirua City Council Māori ward and the Greater Wellington Regional Council Māori constituency. More info about that can be found here:
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Voting papers will be delivered from Tuesday 9 SEPTEMBER.
Voting closes on Saturday 11 OCTOBER.
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Where to vote?
In Pukerua Bay you can cast your vote in bins at Pukerua Bay Library or outside the dairy.
A list of other Porirua locations can be found here:
Special Votes
If you haven’t received your voting pack by Tuesday 9 September, you can still vote.
You’ll just need to complete a special vote available from the council office.
For a special vote to count, voters need to be enrolled with the Electoral Commission by Friday 10 October.
It takes less than five minutes to complete a declaration form as to why they need a special vote, and electors can vote on site or take it away to vote later.
Those electors on the unpublished electoral roll, will get a letter from the Electoral Commission on about 9 September, advising them to complete a special vote at the council office.
For electors going overseas for the entirety of the voting period the legislation for council elections does not allow early voting, ie it is not possible to complete a special vote before 9 September. The Act does not allow online voting, nor any form of electronic voting, nor downloading a voting paper and sending it back by email. It is an option for the council to send a special vote to a static address where the elector is overseas, provided there is time for the voter to complete the SV Declaration and the voting paper, and post it back so that it reaches the Electoral Officer by midday on Saturday 11 October. In doing so, voters are required to pay the appropriate par avion international postage on the envelope in the country that it is sent from.
Want to understand the voting system we use?
There is an explanation of Single Transferrable Vote (STV) here