About two weeks ago, Critic Te Ārohi grabbed a cuppa and a yarn with some of the Vote Otago team. Vote Otago is a "by students, for students" election-year group who conduct political interviews, and turn them into video content for you. First formed in 2011 as Vote Chat, they renamed to Vote Otago in 2020. It's been a while since we've seen or heard of them, but elections come round pretty quickly in Aotearoa, and we were curious how they were getting along for their 6th election cycle.
Critic caught up with the co-producers of Vote Otago 2026, Sophie Bowmar and Alex van der Vliet. Also pitching in were Alexandra Newman, who played an invaluable role on the tech side, and one of many researchers, Liam Calder. They tautoko the work of their 30-large team (shockingly, some of whom aren't POLS students). We were told the general goal of the group was to "demystify" politics by asking "questions relevant to students" like housing, education, and jobs.
For interviews, Vote Otago wants to bring on prominent political figures from parties with above 5% support in opinion polls – the all-important hurdle to gain party seats in Parliament. They won't chat to everyone though, because some have politely said they can't make it, and others ghosted their emails. They've sent out tons of emails, focusing mostly on senior politicians – but this is an election year, everyone is in high demand. They've been lucky to twist some arms with "close connections" to get politicians here to talk about student issues. They're also keen on local Dunedin candidates, regardless of that 5% hurdle, with plenty of electorate votes from students to be snapped up.
Vote Otago is "approaching the end" of its interview rounds. Slowly, but surely, the editing will be completed, and long-form interviews and short-form clips will be rolled out. They've already put out student-centred chats with Opportunity Party candidates, a warm-up with Politics Department bigwigs, and even Labour's leader Chris Hipkins.
Yarns with Christopher Luxon (you might have heard of him), National's James Meager, Labour's Rachel Brooking, and New Zealand First's Kym McDonald-King are also in the pipeline. Interviews with Green Party candidate Francisco Hernandez, ACT Party candidate Paul Henry, and Labour candidate Mananui Ramsden should be out by now.
Here are some highlights: Paul Henry defending ACT's policy to make the student services fee voluntary; Rachel Brooking, an environmental lawyer by trade, talking about the future of our environmental law; Francisco saying he'd join the socialist Alliance Party if the Greens didn't exist.
Interviewing political giants hasn't been a walk in the park. Sophie Bowmar described it as "quite a humbling moment" for the group. While they reckon they're pretty plugged into politics most days of the week, they were challenged interviewing Paul Henry, "one of the most notorious journalists in New Zealand history," and who they said was surprisingly charismatic. Politicians were sometimes very naughty, and interviewers had a task keeping them on student issues. But it wasn't all scares and struggles. Luxon, and actually most politicians, were credited with being friendly, wanting to stick around to learn more, only leaving because their long-suffering aides wanted them to. On the prime minister, "He doesn't scare me," laughed one student in the room. "He's shorter than I expected."
"Student civic engagement" is what they're doing this all for. The content is for those students still "making [their] decision." They left Critic with important election-year info. If students aren't enrolled to vote before 25 October, they will not be able to vote. Early voting will open on 26 October, and there will be polling booths on campus. Voting will be open from October 26th until November 7th, and on that day polling booths will be open longer, from 9 AM to 7 PM. So voting clashes with the October 19th to November 7th exam season, but they stress "it literally takes 2 minutes to vote," and plead to "go vote within your lunch break, go vote between classes."
They also advocate for a "Like, comment, [and] subscribe" to Vote Otago 2026 on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Check them out on socials @voteotago.
