You can call me a nerd, if you want to. But I reckon there is nothing like the performance of walking down to your local polling booth on voting day and casting your vote.

The way we do every three years when we’re electing a Government. In the general election.

There’s no confusion. It’s well-publicised. You can do early voting, if you want to or need to. But we all know, don’t we, that when we wake up on a particular Saturday morning every three years - we know it’s voting day.

Not so straightforward, though, when it comes to voting for our local council. Which, let’s face it, actually has more sway over our daily lives than central Government.

And I think we need to merge the general election with local body elections, which I’ll get to shortly.

But, for some reason, in the spirit of trying to make it easier for us to vote in our local elections, we’ve actually made it more difficult.

And this is something Local Government New Zealand wants to try and sort out. It wants to get more of our voting in the elections for our local councils.

I reckon the pitiful voter turnout - compared to general elections - largely comes down to the fact that you can pretty much vote when you want in local body elections. Well, within a voting period. But you can do it when it suits you.

If you compare voter turnout for the general election with local body elections, it's very clear.

Turnout at last year’s general election was 78.2 percent. Turnout in the most recent local body elections two years ago was 40 percent nationally.

And the reason for that is simple, in my view.

The voting papers for the local body elections arrive in the mail. They sit on the kitchen bench. Every time we walk past them we think, ‘ooh, must get those away’.

But for most people, the only time the papers leave the bench is when they’verealisedit’s all too late and they chuck them in the recycling bin.

And then, for the next three years, they complain about how hopeless their local council is and, you know, “can you believe how our rates have gone up under these clowns?”

So Local Government New Zealand, here’s what needs to happen to make sure more people vote in your local body elections.

For starters, council elections should happen at the same time as general elections.

And there’s a very good reason for this. Not just because it makes sense doing it at the same time.

The reason is, how many times have we heard that councils have had to pull the pin on something - let’s use cycleways as an example - because there’s been a change in Government or a change in Government policy and the money they thought they were getting from Wellington isn’t happening anymore.

If local body elections were held at the same time as general elections, things would be more in sync, wouldn’t they?

And the other big change that’s needed - is we need to get rid of postal voting.

Because, as I say, the papers arrive in the mail but most of us end up throwing them in the bin. Because we just don’t get around to it. Unless you’re a nerd, like me. And unless you love elections.

But for normal people, the voting papers just gather dust - and then it’s too late.

So instead of postal voting in local body elections, I reckon there should be a voting day where you have to turn up at your local polling booth - unless you need to do an early vote - and I reckon that should happen on the same day as the general election.

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