Electoral Act 1993

Election expenses, donations, and annual financial statements - Election expenses of candidates

205D: Apportionment of advertising expenses for publication of candidate advertisement both before and during regulated period

You could also call this:

"How to fairly split costs of election ads published before and during the election period"

If you publish a candidate advertisement both before and during a regulated period, this law applies to you. You must split the costs of the advertisement so that only a fair share of the costs is counted as happening during the regulated period. This is because only the costs that happen during the regulated period are considered election expenses.

When you split the costs, you must make sure it is a fair proportion of the total costs. This means you cannot count all the costs as election expenses if the advertisement was published before the regulated period. You can find more information about the law that changed this rule in the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Act 2010.

If your advertisement is published before the regulated period and keeps being published during the regulated period, you still need to split the costs. The law says that the advertisement is considered to be published during the regulated period, but you must still only count a fair share of the costs as election expenses.

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This page was last updated on 18 July 2025

View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM1867446.

Topics:

Government and voting > Elections

205C: Maximum amount of candidate's total election expenses, or

"How much money a candidate can spend on their election campaign"

205E: Apportionment of election expenses of election advertisement between candidates, or

"How to share the costs of election ads between candidates"

Part 6AElection expenses, donations, and annual financial statements
Election expenses of candidates

205DApportionment of advertising expenses for publication of candidate advertisement both before and during regulated period

This section applies if a candidate advertisement—
is published both before the commencement of the regulated period and during the regulated period; or
is published before the commencement of the regulated period and continues to be published during the regulated period.

If this section applies,—
the candidate advertisement is deemed to have been published during the regulated period; but
the advertising expenses for the publication of the candidate advertisement must be apportioned so that only a fair proportion of the expenses is attributed to being incurred during the regulated period.

Only the advertising expenses attributed to being incurred during the regulated period in accordance with subsection (2) are election expenses.

Notes

Section 205D: substituted, on 1 January 2011, by section 8 of the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Act 2010 (2010 No 137).