Local elections 2026: How do you choose who to vote for?

I get asked a lot who people should vote for. In my position, running a non-partisan civic education non-profit organisation, I think it would be unethical for me to tell people who to vote for. But I am very happy to tell people how I decide.

And perhaps the more important question, with an election approaching, is this:

Do you actually know who you are going to vote for, and why?

Not just which party. Which person? What do you know about them? What do you expect them to do? And how will you know, five years from now, whether they did the job well?

I don’t start with party loyalty. I start with the job.

If the person is an incumbent, or comes from a well-established party that has had the opportunity to govern, then I think it is perfectly reasonable to judge them on what they have actually done.

Have they been responsive when residents raise issues with them? Do they hold proper ward meetings, or are their meetings really just party campaign events? What major issues have they championed on behalf of the ward? What have they actually fought for in council?

I also want to know whether they appear to have a personality and opinions of their own.

One of the things that frustrates me most about politics is how quickly elected representatives can disappear into party machinery. I do not want a councillor whose only function is to repeat the line handed down by the party. I want somebody who can tell me what they think, who understands the place they represent and who is prepared to disagree when necessary.

Proper communication

I also look at whether they communicate properly.

Do they report back on what is happening in the municipality, or is the ward WhatsApp group simply a place where we are told that there is a burst pipe, a power outage or a fault reference number?

I go on to their personal Facebook pages, their ward pages and whatever other social media they use. I want to see how they respond to people. I want to see what they have been doing. Over a few years, a social media page can actually tell you quite a lot about what somebody considers important.

Know what a councillor’s job entails

But there is another part of this that matters just as much.

It is difficult to judge whether a councillor has done a good job, or whether a new candidate is likely to do one, if you have not had even a cursory look at what the job actually entails.

A councillor is not simply the person you phone when the streetlight is broken.

Councillors sit in council. They vote. They serve on committees. They consider budgets, by-laws and reports. They are meant to scrutinise the administration, represent residents, participate in oversight and take decisions that affect the municipality as a whole.

Your ward councillor has a particular responsibility to represent the interests of the people in that ward, but they are also part of a council governing an entire municipality.

So before deciding whether somebody is good or bad at the job, it helps to know what the job is.

That is also the best way to hold them accountable.

If you think a councillor’s entire job is to make sure a pothole gets filled, you may miss the fact that they never read a budget, never ask questions in committee, never challenge bad expenditure and never contribute meaningfully to council.

Equally, somebody may be excellent at posting photographs of themselves at community meetings while doing very little of the less visible work that actually makes local government function.

The more we understand the role, the better our questions become.

Rookie councillors

Then there is the question of newcomers.

We often create an impossible standard for new candidates by saying they have no governing experience, while simultaneously complaining that politics is dominated by the same people over and over again.

Everybody has to be new once.

I know this personally.

I became a councillor at 23 and an MPL at 27.

On paper, I was very young. But I had not simply woken up one morning and decided to run for office. I had been involved in activism since my student days. I had worked before entering council. I had spent years organising, engaging communities, navigating institutions and learning how politics worked from the ground up.

None of that was the same as being a councillor or an MPL. There were still things I had to learn once I was in the job.

But it did mean I arrived with a mixture of experience, political education, work experience, activism and, frankly, the energy to learn very quickly.

That is why I am wary of judging candidates purely by whether they have held elected office before.

The talent required for public office can come from many different places.

Someone may have run a business. They may have managed a school. They may have worked in a community organisation. They may have spent years fighting a particular environmental issue. They may have managed budgets, led teams, organised residents or spent their professional life solving complex problems.

Those things matter.

The question is whether the person can transfer that experience into public office.

Different questions

So if somebody is new, or comes from a smaller party that has not had the opportunity to govern, I ask different questions.

Have they shown capability or competence somewhere else in their life or work?

Have they actually led anything?

Do they understand the job they are running for?

Do they understand what a municipality can and cannot do?

Does their plan or promise seem plausible and doable?

Have they thought beyond the slogan?

And do they appear to have integrity?

I am happy to vote for either kind of person.

Ward vs PR vote

In fact, I often think about my ward vote and my proportional representation vote slightly differently.

For my ward vote, I generally favour the person who seems to have the strongest understanding of the actual issues affecting the ward.

That person does not necessarily have to come from the party I prefer nationally. I want somebody who knows the area, understands the people who live there and will actually represent them.

But when it comes to the PR ballot, I am often quite open to newcomers and smaller parties.

I think healthy councils need them.

People sometimes talk about smaller parties as though their only value is whether they have a realistic chance of becoming the governing party.

I do not think that is the only test.

Sometimes the person you need in council is the rates chairperson whose entire five years will be spent obsessing over whether residents are getting a fair deal.

Sometimes you need the eco warrior who wants the municipality to pass a by-law protecting some indigenous plant or animal I have never heard of, but who can explain why protecting it matters to all of us.

Sometimes you need the small party whose entire reason for existing seems to be making an enormous furore about water quality.

I want those people in council.

They may never become mayor. They may never lead a coalition. They may never have enough seats to pass a budget.

But they may force everybody else to pay attention to something they had previously ignored.

Smaller parties and independents can introduce skills and issues that are simply absent from larger political organisations. They are often created because somebody became sufficiently fed up about one thing to stop complaining and actually run for office.

That is not necessarily a weakness.

Sometimes it is precisely what a stagnant council needs.

Compromise

Of course, voting always involves compromise.

There is probably no political party or candidate who will agree with you on everything. There certainly is not one who agrees with me on everything.

So at some point you have to ask yourself what you are willing to live with and what you are not.

You may agree with a candidate on service delivery but disagree strongly with their party on another issue. You may like the party but think the ward candidate is useless. You may find a smaller party slightly eccentric but think the person they are putting into council would bring a desperately needed skill.

That is the decision.

Voting is not about finding the perfect person. It is about working out which imperfections you can tolerate in exchange for the things you believe matter most.

But whatever choice you make, make it deliberately.

Know who the person is.

Know, at least broadly, what the job is. You cannot hold anybody accountable when you do not know what they are meant to be doing.

Know what they are promising.

Know what you expect from them.

And then keep that standard for the next five years.

Before an election, I think every voter should try to answer one question for themselves:

Five years from now, what would have to have changed for me to say, “I made the right choice”?

Whatever it is, decide that first.

Then look at the ballot and ask who is most likely to get you there.

That, at least, is how I decide. DM