Legal Beagle: MMP Review: Trusting Voters
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
Which is why local government would be way more functional if we ran it like national government:
- councillors elected as part of parties (local or national)
- the mayor/leader elected by councillors and hence able to command a majorityAt the moment, it's just a personality contest do see who's enough of an idiot to attract sufficient publicity to top the poll.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
There's an argument that if we got rid of the threshold, we should also adopt a counting system that requires more votes for the first MP.
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Graeme Edgeler, in reply to
There’s an argument that if we got rid of the threshold, we should also adopt a counting system that requires more votes for the first MP.
That was essentially my proposal, and also the one offered by the Royal Commission, who recommended a modified form of Sainte-Laguë in the event we had no artificial threshold.
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tussock, in reply to
The second is debateable … the Sante Lague fomula used to apportion seats amongst those parties that cross the threshold slightly favours smaller parties over larger one. So one could argue that the Greens and NZ First actually get more benefit (in terms of the amount of representation they get in Parliament) out of having a 5 or 4% threshold than does National or Labour.
No. Sante Lague only "favours small parties" in comparison to D'Honte, which screws them. Our system reallocates wasted vote proportionately, and most of the proportion is held by the two biggest parties. Four seats worth of votes in this election went to Colin Craig and the ALCP. Those seats were instead allocated 2 to National, 1 to Labour, and 1 to the Greens, as the last four seats allocated (117 N/118 L/119 G/120 N).
As an aside, post-election polling showed 10 seats worth of people didn't vote specifically because the election result was so certain there was no point to it. TEN SEATS. Reporting on pre-election polling is beyond fucked up. Gods-damned Duncan Garner telling everyone lies.
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OK, good reasons to dump the threshold, even if you don't like the small parties.
1: They totally take power off each other, the more of them are in there. Part of Winston wanting less parties is he has the most power when there's only one of them, his, and he doesn't want to be there with just 3 MPs specifically because he can't get much done that isn't forced on him by the big parties.
2: Because the "balance of power" tends to dilute among many small parties, none of them can push their idealism too hard. If National or Labour need to agree with four or more splinter groups to pass something, that can't be too offputting for any of those parties.
Who it (no threshold) hurts most is basically the ones that sit in the middle like Winston does now. If you have National able to grab a majority with any two of Peter, Winston, Tariana, Colin, Outdoor Rec, or ALCP, they're simply in a much weaker each than if National can only get 61 votes with one of them.
But we've done this, they've done this, it's pretty basic stuff, and I guess no one fucking cares. They're actually going to make it harder to get a small party in compared to the past, so we'll have more extremists holding the balance over time, and people are mostly complaining about how you get the best people standing for your electorate vote. Mass insanity, I guess, hardly uncommon.I guess it's nice we get to keep MMP at all, given the very serious threat it just faced. Still, what a waste. /sadface.
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Sacha, in reply to
specifically because the election result was so certain there was no point to it
any link about that?
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ODT editorial, you'd have to ask for their sources I suppose. Electoral Commission by the look of it, I haven't read all their stuff so don't know.
http://www.odt.co.nz/opinion/editorial/221747/mmp-review
Non-voters gave largely the same reasons as in 2008 for not voting: "other commitments" (14%), "work commitments" (9%), "couldn't be bothered" (14%), "could not work out who to vote for" (11%). The number of non-voters giving the response "it was obvious who would win so why bother" as a factor influencing their decision not to vote increased from 19% in 2008 to 31% in 2011.
But I see now that's "a factor", so presumably one of many. Otherwise (0.31*0.26 = 0.08) * 120 = ~10 seats. The first ones are 4 seats "other commitments", 3 seats "work", 4 seats "not bothered", 3 seats "who was what now". That's enrolled voters not voting, though realistically it's not often got over ~85% so more like half that all 'round for people who might normally have voted (and 5 seats of "Duncan said don't bother", which is still the balance of power one way or another).
Oh, and they did kick all the convicts off the roll last time too, I've no idea how many that disenfranchised, but enrolment seemed high despite that so not too many (noting that it is a 1 seat majority).
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