Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #1, in reply to Phil Lyth,
I haven’t been following this closely over the last few months, but it seems Parliament has made two contradictary statements in Schedule 2 of the Electoral Referendum Act.
They have.
And I pointed it out in my written submission on the bill. And in my oral submission.
[And in comment threads on various blogs.]
It’s also a problem that arises with every other system, except MMP.
Parliament has declared that they will all have 120 MPs, and that in each of them, there will be a fixed number in the South Island.
It’s not technically contradictory, in that there are ways to do it, but it is impossible under FPP, PV and STV (and under SM with exactly 90 electorates) unless Parliament abandons the principle that electorates should be approximately equal in size.
It’s basically analogous to Arrow’s impossibility theorem – you may have any two of the following:
a fixed number of electorates; or
a fixed number of electorates in the South Island; or
fair electorates of approximately equal sizebut you may not have all three.
The Ministry of Justice advice to the Select Committee on this point was basically ‘that’s a matter for the next Parliament’. I was a little disappointed by that, and briefly considered launching a campaign against change on the basis that Parliament was using this process to rort the electoral system and surreptitiously and dishonestly increase the electoral influence of South Island voters. But in the end, what they are really doing is lying to us because it's easier.
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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #1, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Repeatedly referring to electoral MPs ‘sneaking back into parliament on the list’ when they’d been legally elected in fair, very public elections was a cheap concerted attempt to smear MMP.
And saying that FPP and SM are undemocratic is an attempt to smear those systems.
They are non-proportional systems. That is not the same thing.
I’d like to know who is doing the PR for the supposedly grassroots “Vote for Change”, what their PR budget is and who is funding it.
I don't particularly care. Their arguments are either good or bad. Their statements are either factual or not.
In the three months before the referendum there is a spending limit of $300,000.
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Legal Beagle: Referendum Fact Check #1, in reply to Hilary Stace,
One thing that annoys me is that opponents of MMP also seem to want to get rid of a system whereby those not voted in on the electorate vote ‘come back in again by the back door’ meaning they come to parliament on the list. In Ohariu, for example, ... Under SM with its much smaller list, surely this could still happen if the candidates were also high on the much more limited party list. So they are deluded if they think voting out MMP for SM will change that. Am I right there?
Yes. Many of the concerns people have with lists under MMP are also present under SM.
You could change MMP so some of them weren't there. You could invent a system of SM where some of them weren't present. But we probably wouldn't.
Changes to MMP on things like this could occur as part of the Electoral Commission review of MMP. Given you concerns with such changes you would be able to argue against them.
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I would like someone to ask Jordan Williams (the ONLY spokesman for Vote for Change according to their website) what he thought of the situation in the UK after the last election
Morning Report pretty much did.
He pointed out that it was a rare occurrence. Which it is.
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Sorry, I forgot to turn on comments. I've fixed it now.
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Legal Beagle: Good news, everybody (for everybody), in reply to Tim McKenzie,
Graeme, you seem to be suggesting that (wittingly or not) the Māori and Mana parties are pursuing something like this strategy (with two parties, rather than with one party and lots of independents).
Yep. Although the Māori Party may not be in on it. It doesn't require collusion, and Hone doesn't need the Māori Party's permission. They make it easier for him if they don't run in Northland, but it's mostly up to Mana and their choice over whether to run candidates in Māori Party-held electorates.
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Legal Beagle: Mana update, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
How can our electoral laws have been updated umpteen times in the last couple of decades, but this bit of language still be stuck in the 1960s?
1950s.
But yes ... despite MMP, and the EFA and the new bits of the Electoral Act post-EFA, our electoral laws are very much the same as they were under First Past the Post.
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Legal Beagle: Good news, everybody (for everybody), in reply to Kyle Matthews,
What is the status of the Maori Party – Hone deal not to run against each other then? In the scrap bin?
The Maori Party intends to run against Hone. I suspect Mana does not intend to run against the Maori Party.
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Pita Sharples just indicated that he intends to stand an electorate candidate in Te Tai Tokerau in November.
Solomon Tipene: the Maori Party's Aaron Bhatnager.
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Legal Beagle: Mana update, in reply to bmk,
I thought the BORA basically had no significance to other laws. So that if the BORA grants you the right to free speech but another law prohibits certain acts of speech then those certain acts of speech become illegal.
Absolutely not the case. Although in a situation like this where a lot of very specific things are banned the BORA may not be able to assist, when a more general statute is being applied, the existence of fundamental rights guaranteed by BORA can make a substantial difference.
I’m wondering how s.197 of the Electoral Act gets interpreted to conform to the BORA.
I doesn't. At least not by a Court and not yet. Very few charges are laid under this provision, and never for anything of the nature we're worried about.
That said, it is entirely proper for the police to take account of free speech and other rights before even laying charges.