17 Aug 2017

Ruling on prisoner voting upheld

5:58 pm on 17 August 2017

A group of prisoners have lost their legal challenge to a ban on prisoner voting.

Arthur Taylor in the High Court at Auckland.

Arthur Taylor in the High Court at Auckland. Photo: RNZ / Kim Baker-Wilson

In 2010, Parliament passed a law preventing all sentenced prisoners from voting, regardless of the length of their sentence.

However, earlier electoral legislation allowed those jailed for less than three years to vote.

In 2015, career criminal Arthur Taylor and two others unsuccessfully sued the government in the High Court, claiming they had been unlawfully barred from voting in the 2014 general election.

The High Court ruled against them and today the Court of Appeal upheld that earlier ruling - deciding the ban on prisoner voting does not breach the Bill of Rights.

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