Polling places in odd spaces

See - the booth is made from cardboard.

Come over to NZ and you can have them in your own home!

"Polling booths can be found in the most incongruous of places. Charmaine and Dave Hammond's house is a polling booth in Kaikoura.

The couple's Marama Rd home is one of 70 polling stations in the Kaikoura electorate. People have voted there, on and off, for about 50 years. Voters will collect their papers at the kitchen table before making their choice behind screens in the lounge."

I'm off now to weild the orange marker pen.

Postscript: there were 2 orange marker pens tied to the booth I used - one for each vote?

The children's artwork was excellent, included a whole wall where each had drawn a picture of a big vase of flowers, all to welcome a returning teacher

Voting Kiwi Style

Just watched the final of a Brit tv series I enjoyed, thinking "I wonder what we'll get next Saturday?"

Silly me, is only the general election results.

Now voting in NZ is very high tech. I'll line up at my nearest polling station (a local school) already for them to look up my name in electoral register. Once found they write my line reference onto my voting papers and note the ref in relation to the voting paper number, and draw a line through my name on the printed register.

Next I wander over to the voting booth - made of corrugated cardboard so can be flat packed between elections - and get to weild a bright ORANGE mini marker pen and make my two ORANGE ticks. Only ticks are acceptable.

Two votes - yes one for the my choice of electorate mp (out of 14 candidates) and the other for my party vote (from a choice of 19 parties).

The ORANGE mini marker is attached to the cardboard voting booth by a length of knotted string. String colour may vary.

The votes get placed in a cardboard box which has plastic tie thingies on the corners for security.

(The school is only a 5 minute walk from my home, and always has great artwork from the kids on display.)