A Community Election Event is being held in the town hall this Sunday. Taurikura, who ran the local body election meet the candidates event last year, is running the event on Sunday at 11am. Their focus is to try to get communities out to vote and will be running a fun interactive session about the basics of enrolling, voting and party policies. The General Election will be held on Saturday 14th October with early voting available in the town hall from Monday 2nd October.
Meantime Waikato regional council has opted to stick with the first past the post voting system for the 2025 local body election. This means that there will be no change for the way we select the 2 councillors in our constituency for the Waikato Regional Council.
They considered the STV system but turned it down with the regular excuse that voters are confused by the concept of ranking candidates.
19 per cent (15) of local authorities currently use the STV system and 81 per cent (63) used FPP. In the Waikato region, only Hamilton City Council uses STV.
The two Māori constituencies, introduced by Waikato Regional Council ahead of the 2013 elections, will also be retained following a vote of 9-2.
Ngā Hau e Wha Māori constituency councillor Tipa Mahuta abstained from the vote to encourage councillors to proactively include Māori constituencies, while two councillors said they felt it was not democratic and voted against the motion.
In local sport the Raglan Roosters defaulted their last game of the season because of fathers day we’re told. In the end the result wouldn’t have made a difference to the table of the Waikato Football Sunday League with the opposition Marist FC winning every single game of the league and the Roosters stuck in 4th place for 2023 win, draw or lose. This means the Roosters will be handing over the Division One to Marist this year.