"Being registered to vote and then actually voting for candidates who can represent you is critical," Shamubeel Eaqub says.

OPINION: Local government voting documents will be delivered between September 16 and 21. I hardly ever check my snail-mail, but I will make a regular trip to the mailbox to get my election forms.

Voting matters. The result matters for who is elected. Who voted matters for the elected officials when they think about who they represent.

Voter registration is over 90 per cent for people over 35, but just 66 per cent for those under 25.

TOM JACOBS/REUTERS If young people had registered and voted, then Remain would have won by 2 per cent of the votes.

Voter turnout, using old data, is just a third for under 25, but over 85 per cent for old people.



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Our elections are not representative, because young people, poor people and renters are less likely to enrol and vote.

Their voices are diminishing and that needs to change. More often than not, its them and their children who will be most influenced by long term decisions being made in local councils.

For me, Brexit is a reminder of how voter registration and turnout can make a big difference.

If the Brexit voter intentions are applied to New Zealand local election voting patterns, the vote would have gone to Leave by 6 per cent of the votes.

If everyone registered to vote had actually voted, then it would have been a dead heat. Leave and Remain each would have 50 per cent of the votes.

If young people had registered and voted, then Remain would have won by 2 per cent of the votes.

Being registered to vote and then actually voting for candidates who can represent you is critical.

The reality is that big issues are increasingly being decided by and for polarised societies.

Whether it is across age groups, renters versus home-owners, rich versus the poor, or the skilled versus the unskilled.

When the voting turnout and elected figures are similarly polarised, the system of government can become enthralled to one group.

District planning often brings out the worst, as it did in Auckland with the Unitary Plan.

Old and mainly white home owners (increasingly a minority in Auckland) heckled young people as they argued sensibly for significantly increased housing supply, to let them live and work in Auckland.

That meeting probably helped a great deal to galvanise various groups, including youth led initiatives like Generation Zero to campaign hard for the Unitary Plan to be adopted.

The broad engagement on the Unitary Plan, on its reasons, strengths and weaknesses was unusual but welcome.

The information to make select candidates is notoriously inadequate.

On the information for local councils at the Department of Internal Affairs, who look after these kinds of things, the information for local government candidates are filled with: look at the media, look at billboards, go to community events and what the candidate may voluntarily give to the electoral office.

There is little structure on the information provided by candidates on their strategic views on intergenerational welfare, housing and land use, borrowing, rates and basic services.

So its near impossible to compare candidates. And in the last election, there was no alternative with 17 per cent of councillors elected unopposed – so there was no one to compare with.

Local government provides basic services like water, sewerage, rubbish collection, parks and recreational facilities.

But also strategic things like how and where a place grows, how much to tax current residents with rates and how much to borrow to spread the cost of investments over a longer period.

The upcoming local government elections matter not just for the ordinary day to day stuff councils do, but also for intergenerational planning and stewardship for future generations.

In this election, registering and voting will make a big difference.

For future elections, we need to see an increase in contestability of seats and some basic and comparable information on candidates values on the big decisions local councils make.