Electoral Act 1993

Election advertising - General rules governing election advertisements

204C: Apportionment of advertising expenses for publication of election advertisement promoted by unregistered promoter both before and during regulated period

You could also call this:

"How to split advertising costs if you're not registered and advertise before and during the election period"

If you promote an election advertisement and you are not registered, this law applies to you. You might publish your advertisement before and during a special time called the regulated period. If you do, the law says your advertisement is considered to be published during the regulated period, but you only need to count the expenses for the time it was published during that period.

You need to split your advertising expenses fairly, so only some of them are counted as being spent during the regulated period. The law says you must do this to figure out how much you spent on advertising during the regulated period.

When you work out how much you spent during the regulated period, you use that amount for the purposes of section 204B(1)(d).

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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=DLM3486964.

Topics:

Government and voting > Elections

204B: Persons who may promote election advertisements, or

"Who can pay for election ads and how much they can spend"

204D: Offence to avoid limit set out in section 204B(1)(d), or

"Don't try to cheat the election spending limit"

Part 6AAElection advertising
General rules governing election advertisements

204CApportionment of advertising expenses for publication of election advertisement promoted by unregistered promoter both before and during regulated period

This section applies if an election advertisement that is promoted by an unregistered promoter—
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 election advertisement is deemed to have been published during the regulated period; but
the advertising expenses for the publication of the election 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 determined in accordance with subsection (2) are advertising expenses for the purposes of section 204B(1)(d).

Compare

ss 205C, 206C

Notes

Section 204C: inserted, on 1 January 2011, by section 7 of the Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting) Amendment Act 2010 (2010 No 137).