Increasing Voter Turnout Among Target Audiences: Findings and Recommendations

Synthesise The Relevant Findings The Qualitative Research Report Provided The Findings That Relate To The Mdp And Mrp?

Provide Recommendations For The Electoral CommissionThe Question Of How To Negate Any Perceived Barriers To Voting And Increase Voter Turnout Among The Target Audiences?

New Zealand is a democratic country and the election commission of New Zealand is the crown entity responsible for the parliamentary election of the New Zealand. Election of members of parliament is to be processed by the election commission where, citizens of the country will be voting for the selection. A qualitative and quantitative research of the Election Commission of New Zealand reveled that a major part of the community is still left out from the electoral roll of the New Zealand and a significant of registered citizens abstain from engaging into the voting process of the parliamentary election. Therefore the management decision problems in this report is the engagement of more audiences in the voting process and the marketing research problem is finding the ways in improvement in the audience engagement in voting process. This report focuses on those major research problems and the management issues of the New Zealand Election Commission, to find ways and suggests to the election commission to engage more audience in the voting process of the country (Crothers 2018).

This research is about the engagement of the community in the voting process, or the engagement of the audiences of the country to the state election process. All the citizens of the country having the age of more than 21 years are eligible to participate in the voting process of parliamentary election. As this research paper focuses on the gap in audience engagement in the voting process, information about the population of the country and the existing electoral roll has been used for finding out the proportion of community left out from the electoral roll of the country. The last election shows that, from the total number of registered citizens of the country eligible for voting have not voted yet. Information from the last election result have also been used for making a comparison and conclusion about the proportion of registered community abstain themselves from engaging into the voting process. People who are included in the electoral roll of the country but abstain from the voting process due to certain perceptions and behavioral aspects, all those points have been analyzed and interpreted in this report.

Method

The election commission of the New Zealand is responsible for registration of the voters and to update the electoral roll. They are also responsible for conducting the state election process and to elect the members of the parliament. As the country is a democratic country, such members of the parliament is elected by the citizens of the country by common voting process. Parliamentary member candidate who gets the majority vote is selected as the Member of Parliament. Hence, the voting of citizens is very important in the constituting the state parliament and contributing towards the administration of the state. Therefore, the election commission must ensure that, eligible citizens are registered in the electoral roll and the electoral roll is updated frequently. The election commission of New Zealand must also ensure that all the eligible citizens of the country engage in the voting process and contribute to the election of members of the parliament. From the research it can be found that a different category of the community are facing certain barriers to get themselves registered into the electoral roll and also a major part of the registered community is not participating in the voting process. Following points can elaborate briefly the findings and outcomes of this research (Rahul 2019).

They believe that, there nothing wrong in voting or not voting, as it is a democratic right, the state or the election commission cannot force them to vote or not to vote. They think that politics is not suitable for them and feel it unpleasant, hence although they are registered and enrolled in electoral roll still they abstain from voting for the state election. They also thinks that there is no difference in voting or not to voting, there is no impact and influence of their vote in electing the members of the parliament and to make changes in the administration process. They consider it as a process and tradition inhabited from their parents (Tsai et al. 2019).

A major part of the female citizens are not getting themselves registered in the electoral roll of the New Zealand Election Commission. Also, a major part of the registered female citizens abstains from the voting process. Females have a perception that, the politics is a matter which needs to be managed by the male member of the family and they shows least interest and are least bothered about the politics. They considers the registration in the electoral roll as a national identity documents. Hence, these perception and belief kept a major part of the female community of the country aside from the politics and voting process (Jackson & McRobie 2019).

Findings

Many of the people from the pacific community following the Christianity abstain themselves from the voting process. They have some other religious perception and they do not believe the voting process may make any improvement in the social welfare with the voting process.

A major part of the Chinese migrants are also out from the electoral roll due to lack of suitable foreign policies of the government. They are cognitive enough, but still they think it is not a task of the Chinese immigrants to take a part in the administration of the New Zealand. This type of belief and perception kept them away from the voting process.

From the above discussion and analysis, it is clear that though the election commission of New Zealand is working continuously for citizens’ registration and conducting the voting process for election of state administrators, still there are a major gap in it which blocks the way of achieving the objectives of a democratic country and the intended objectives of the voting process. It can be concluded from the above analysis that two major groups are mostly missed out from the electoral roll and voting process, which are the Maori community and the female community of the country.

It can be understood from the research that the perception and belief of those community is the main reason why they abstain themselves from the voting process. Hence, it can be recommended as a next step for the election commission to take an initiative of major campaigning making them aware of the importance of the voting process and the contribution required for nation building. Each single vote has a contribution in the nation building process and making the society better off by electing a good leader as a law maker in the parliament. Another recommendation for the election commission is to conduct the registration process frequently and through state bodies and local governmental bodies and make it mandatory for all the eligible citizens, and it can ensure that no single eligible voter is missed out from the electoral roll. Lastly, the awareness within the community is importance and it must be focused on by the election commission through various campaign programme to achieve the objective of inclusion of all the eligible community of the country in voting process.

References and Bibliography

Crothers, C. (2018). An introduction to election commentaries: the responsibilities of social scientists around elections.

Exeter, D. J., Crengle, S., Cavadino, A., Greaves, L., Zhao, J., Lee, A., & Browne, M. (2018). The geography of deprivation in New Zealand by electorate. Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online, 13(2), 195-212.

Jackson, K., & McRobie, A. (2019). New Zealand Adopts Proportional Representation: Accident? Design? Evolution?. Routledge.

Murchison, A. (2018, February). Political communication in New Zealand: A study of political party advertising in the 2008 general election. In New Zealand Political Studies Association Conference, University of Auckland. Available at https://nzpsa. files. wordpress. com/2008/11/nzpsa_conference-paper_ashley-murchison-20091. pdf. Accessed (Vol. 15).

Potts, M. (2019). Assessing Fiji's recent general election. New Zealand International Review, 44(2), 26.

Rahul, K. (2019). Impact of New Media on Political Communication in 2014 Parliamentary Elections.

Tsai, C. H., Tan, A. C., & Jung, K. (2019). An analysis of the 2014 New Zealand general election: do Internet use and online party mobilisation matter?. Political Science, 71(1), 79-91.

Zealand, T. N. N. (2016). Board revises election code. Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand, 22(1).