Aotearoa New Zealand needs to look beyond voting and the electoral system to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi in its democracy

Aotearoa New Zealand needs to look beyond voting and the electoral system to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi in its democracy Lara GreavesIn Aotearoaas is the case in many Western nationsthe public tend to view 'politics' as a system where democracy equals voting, and one vote per person, no questions asked, no exceptions.This elicits a 'gut' feeling of fairness in many.The reliance on a narrow conceptualisation often means things gets labelled democratic or undemocratic, relevant or not, through a binary.From this, New Zealanders bolster the idea that free and fair elections are a key part of our democracy.Indeed, Aotearoa tends to rate highly on many international indexes of democratic quality and transparency.Often cited along with this is that New Zealand were the first country to 'give' women the vote (Atkinson, 2003).Aotearoa has also always had relatively high elections turnout, and students of politics often revel in the fact that New Zealand has not needed compulsory voting like Australia (Townrow, 2021).But, in what follows, I argue that this narrow focus on voting is misplaced, especially when it comes to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.Conceptualising democracy to include deliberative practice will better serve to uphold Te Tiriti within our electoral democracy.