Advance voting started today around New Zealand, with voting closing in fourteen days' time.

The Electoral Commission says that advance voting accounted for nearly half of all votes in 2017, and that figure could go as high as 60 per cent this time.

Voters are now able to head to the polls from today, as 450 advance voting places open for the election and referendums.

The national manager of voting services, Graeme Astle says the commission is encouraging people to cast their votes early in order to minimise election-day queues and lessen the risk of Covid-19.

"I think people have cottoned on to the fact that you don't have to wait for Election Day and what we have tried to do is to make it as accessible and easy as possible for people to get out and vote and voting early, voting locally, mininising queuing are all of the sorts of key things that we're hoping for this time."

The chief electoral officer, Alicia Wright says the election is being run as though the country were at alert level 2, so physical distancing and single-use pens will be mandatory at polling stations.

Hand sanitiser will also be available.

Meanwhile, 400,000 eligible voters have yet to enrol for the election in two weeks, but the Election Commission says there's still time.

Two thousand six hundred polling stations will be open on Election Day, October 17.

At this year's general election, for the first time, there will be a bilingual voting place where election staff will be able to take people through the voting process in te reo Māori. The te reo Māori voting place is a community initiative led by the Māori medium school Te Wharekura O Rakaumanga and supported by the Electoral Commission.

The kura has a network of community members and past pupils who are fluent Māori speakers and can work in the voting place, delivering voting services to the local community in Māori. The voting papers for the election and referendums will be in English.

Information on voting in multiple languages is also available with guides to voting in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Japanese, Koren, Niuean, Samoan, Spanish, Tokelauan, Tongan and Vietnamese.

This election the Electoral Commission is piloting a New Zealand Sign Language interpreting service for deaf voters at seven voting places in Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington and Christchurch. Five will have access to the New Zealand Video Interpreting Service (NZVIS) via a tablet and two will have a sign language interpreter on site. There are set times when the service will be available at each voting place.

For those who are blind, partially blind or have a physical disability that means they can't mark their voting paper without help, they can vote using the commission's telephone dictation service. Voters need to register for this service.

The Electoral Commission have provided a map of advance and election day voting places around NZ. Click here to find your nearest voting place. The commission says that there is high demand today on the address search function on their map and they are working on increasing capacity so that functionality can be restored as soon as possible.