On 31 March 2023 the Māori Electoral Option changed.
If you’re Māori, you choose which roll to be on when you first enrol to vote. You can change your roll type at any time, except:
- in the 3 months before a general election
- in the 3 months before local elections which are held every 3 years
- before a parliamentary by-election if the change would move you into the electorate where the by-election is being held.
Before 31 March 2023, you could choose which roll to be on when you first enrolled to vote, then could only change roll types during the Māori Electoral Option, which took place every 5 or 6 years.
Current Māori and General Electorates
What does your choice mean for you
The date electoral data is supplied to Stats NZ also changed
The number of Māori on the general and Māori rolls along with information from the five-yearly census is used to calculate the number of electorate seats in Parliament.
When a census is held, we provide Stats NZ with the number of Māori who are enrolled to vote as at the census date.
If the census and general election take place in the same year, as they did in 2023, the data is provided as at 1 April the following year (2024).
Roll numbers were previously provided to Stats NZ for the electoral calculations at the end of the Māori Electoral Option period.