Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to 3410,
How is it that parties not currently represented in parliament (ie New Zealand First) are eligible for election broadcasting funding?
The Law says they are eligible. Has since its inception.
The law could say something else, but it doesn't.
And here are some of my views on the Broadcasting Allocation process which I prepared earlier...
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Steven Price,
I’m not aware that any NZ name suppression order been breached through twitter yet. Only a handful have been breached online. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone twitters a suppressed name or one subject to an injunction. But we’re still a far cry from suppression orders being completely useless.
Here's one TVNZ prepared earlier. And here's the New Zealand Herald.
I thought with Martin Devlin there were a number of facebook updates etc. that randomly mentioned his name, same with the comedian. I'm not on twitter, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't the same.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Most of the other parties choose and rank their list through an opaque, undemocratic process.
It is a requirement for registering a party to contest the party vote that the party have a democratic process for selecting candidates for both electorates and lists, and these processes have to be public (i.e. they're on the Electoral Commission's website).
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to nzlemming,
So, the logic goes, if you disallow advertising you’ll make coercion harder too. Also, as “Gandalf” noted in the Harold comments yesterday:
There should be no electioneering on election day. If we remove all restrictions on election day advertising you will get massive inflammatory lying rhetoric from large organised groups, a real problem as there is no time for a right of reply.
It seems to me that all these arguments against electioneering on election day are based on some pretty elaborate strawmen. I suppose I don’t really care either way, but we are talking about a law that could fine you $20,000 for an indiscreet tweet or facebook status. Man, you must be doing something pretty damn serious.
Well, if you removed all restrictions, then that might happen, but we wouldn't. The law makes it a corrupt practice (punishable by two years' prison) to publish a false statement with the intention of influencing voters any time before the close of the poll, or in the preceding two days.
I don't think the sky will fall if we abandon this rule; I'm just telling people why we adopted it, why we've kept it (as well as some reasons that aren't behind it); it's entirely possible some people will not consider them particular convincing.
Also. The maximum possible fine, for the absolute worst offending against this law is $20,000. We are not talking about a law that can see you fined $20,000 for tweeting. Factually and legally that is impossible.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to chris,
My main peeve with it is that it implies that New Zealanders are inherently fools, gullible and easily swayed off an opinion by any old gambit, which A; I’ve found not to be the case, and B; is not a lot to live up to.
To laud such a law is almost to deny that people possess the intelligence to vote responsibly. If you believe people lack the intelligence to vote responsibly, then why live in a democracy?
The most ludicrous aspect being the legal perception that these fools are most at risk of stupidity in that minuscule window that is 24 hours surrounding an election.
That is not what it is about. I agree that that could be a reason why someone might want or support such a law, however it is not the reason why we have such a law.
We have this law because:
* politicians can stuff off - today is about us the voters;
* we want people to be able to vote without being harassed by people outside polling places who might scare them off: can't be bothered going through all that, etc;
* we actually like the serenity - it feels like democracy;It's not about twitter. This law covers twitter because it was written broadly enough that it would, back when it was written ages ago.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to steve black,
I’m in favour of a voting and selection system which gives more power to individuals and less power to parties. I’m in favour of a voting system which is as proportional as can be. What to do?
If that's your view, vote for keep MMP on the first question, vote for STV on the second and if keep MMP wins then make a submission to the independent review on MMP and push for open lists.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to steve black,
I was shocked when I saw a voting paper in Australia. They required you to rank every candidate from 1..N with no duplications, no rankings left out, and the full ranking from 1..N. Make the slightest error and your vote is wasted. You can’t just go 1,2,3 and leave the rest out.
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And the solution in the case of the Australian ballot I saw worried me even more. They have the ballot paper divided into two sections. You can either tick a “vote whatever National wants” or “vote whatever Labor wants” single box and that gives all your votes (and preferences) to be used in whatever back room deals (they may no longer be smoke filled) are done. This gives even more power to political parties and less power to individuals.1. We would not require an exhaustive ballot in New Zealand under either PV, or STV.
2. We would allow an "above the line" vote, where you can adopt a party's preference. I would expect that parties would have to announce these in advance. I would certainly be pushing for that if STV or PV were to top the second question.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Russell Brown,
So 10,000 people could self-report? Not saying they should, but presumably they could.
You could report 10,000 people :-)
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Russell Brown,
Rick’s comment above suggests that the Norwich Pharmacal rule means they could. Whether they would is another matter.
That's a civil matter. We're talking about the criminal jurisdiction here.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Does that mean that the NZ government couldn’t get a court order against Twitter?
I don't want to be too definitive (not knowing US law as well as one might), but yes.
Even if Twitter was based in New Zealand they couldn't get the information, unless Twitter volunteered it.