With close to one million New Zealanders living overseas and only one in ten of those opting to vote come election time, that leaves a serious amount of Kiwis who aren’t having a say on their country’s future.
So, in order to influence overseas non-voters to become voters in the 2020 national election, nonpartisan initiative Every Kiwi Vote Counts turned to the experts in online election influencing.
Yes, we turned to the Russians.
Our spokesperson, Viktor, led a campaign asking Kiwis to ‘Meddle in the New Zealand election’. He targeted overseas Kiwis on social, through PR and outdoor in heavily Kiwi-populated cities, constantly sending people to his website to vote.
And like any good Russian meddler, he got the job done - Enrolment went up 24%, votes cast online were up by 42%, we had the largest shift in electoral seats since 1999.
