Special votes in New Zealand are provisional ballots used when someone can’t cast a normal “ordinary” vote under the usual conditions, but is still allowed to have their vote counted once extra checks are done.

What are special votes in NZ?

In New Zealand elections, a special vote (also called a special declaration vote) is used when you’re eligible to vote, but your situation doesn’t fit the standard “turn up at your local booth and vote off the printed roll” setup. You fill in a form making a formal declaration about who you are and why you’re voting specially, and that paperwork is checked before your ballot is officially added to the count.

Common situations where someone uses a special vote include:

  • You are in New Zealand but outside your home electorate and the place you’re voting doesn’t have ordinary voting papers for your electorate.
  • You are voting from overseas.
  • Your name is not on the printed electoral roll where you’re voting, but you believe you should be enrolled there.
  • You enrolled close to election day (after the printed roll was produced).
  • You are on the unpublished roll (for safety or privacy reasons).
  • You are voting by post or via special assisted methods because getting to a polling place would cause hardship or serious inconvenience (illness, hospital, travel, etc.).
  • In some elections, certain prisoners on remand or serving short sentences can also cast special votes.

How do special votes work?

When you cast a special vote, you must sign a declaration form stating you’re eligible, correctly enrolled (or entitled to be), and that you haven’t already voted. That declaration travels with your ballot back to your correct electorate, where officials then check your enrolment and eligibility against the roll before deciding whether the vote can be counted.

Because special votes have to be sent back to the right electorate and individually checked, they take longer to process than ordinary votes. There is typically a window of up to about 10 days after election day for special votes to be returned, and the full official result (including all valid special votes) is released some weeks after the preliminary election-night result.

Why do special votes matter?

Special votes can make up a significant share of the total vote and sometimes shift the final seat numbers once they’re included. In recent general elections, hundreds of thousands of special votes have been cast, including a large number from overseas, and they have occasionally changed how many seats particular parties hold once the official count is complete. Commentators often watch them closely because they have historically leaned a bit more towards left-leaning parties, which can slightly alter the balance after election night.

In online forum and news discussions, you’ll often see people say “wait for specials” — they’re talking about this exact process, where these checked, later-counted ballots can tighten races or tip marginal seats once they’re added to the official result.

TL;DR: Special votes in NZ are verified, “extra-step” ballots used when you can’t cast an ordinary vote (overseas, out of electorate, not on printed roll, etc.), and they’re checked and added later to produce the final official election result.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.