Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Idiot Savant,
I didn’t say it was hard. I said it cost money, which the Electoral Commission is unlikely to have. They’ll be funded for an expected level of electoral crime. But if there are thousands of cases, then they won’t be able to enforce the law.
The job of enforcing this lies with the police, to whom the Electoral Commission refers these matters: yo, police, Twitter account "NZerforNZFirst" tweeted "don't fuget to vot winstin da man" at 11am on polling day, can you look into it? That sort of thing.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Grant McDougall,
In other words, it’s a bit like the rule that everyone over 18 must be registered to vote (I think…) and open to prosecution if not. Of course no one’s every prosecuted for not registering, but the Commission is obliged to at least put up the window dressing.
Not quite.
The penalty for not registering to vote is far lower, and there's a provision in the Electoral Act forbidding the prosecution of someone if they later register.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Kind of difficult to figure out who would be harmed by twittering on election day.
The law itself seems to imply that last minute electioneering is unfair in some mysterious way, to whom?
The sense of solemn occasion would be harmed. And allowing people to badger you on the way to and outside of polling booths might discourage some people from voting.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to Rick Shera,
We do have High Court and District Court Rules in NZ allowing pre-trial discovery
Wouldn't work. That's for civil cases.
The ordinary course for criminal cases is a search warrant.
However, the charge here is a fine-only summary offence, so that won't work. They can charge twitter, maybe, and a bunch of ISPs, but there's no way they're getting anonymous information without voluntary assistance.
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Hard News: We are all Twitter, in reply to BenWilson,
I'm not so sure. They could just send fines to as many people as they can easily get, targeting people with the most followers, making the most posts, or the most obvious ones.
It's not an infringement offence like speeding where they can just fine you.
They have to issue summonses and bring you before a court.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to BenWilson,
Graeme hasn’t come back to me about why Fine Gael should be entitled to 27% (=(45.8/36.1)-100%) more seats than it got first preferences for.
If you believe that the first preference is the only important vote, and that proportionality with respect to the first preference is all important, then they shouldn't.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to Idiot Savant,
its not worth dying in a ditch over (unlike the big parties efforts to get rid of the electorate lifeboat, which will break things significantly)
I used to be a strong supporter of the lifeboat. The arguments usually arrayed against it are pretty easily dismissed (i.e. it's not unfair that 85,496 ACT voters are represented in Parliament).
But then the argument was put a different way: If I believe in one person one vote, all votes of equal value, why do I support a system whereby voters who live in Tauranga, or Epsom get to decide who five MPs will be, but voters in other electorates get to decide only one? Giving some voters such disproportionate power based solely on where they live is as offensive to democratic principles as the role of safe seats and marginal seats under FPP.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to LIISA,
apparently we’re all a bit too dumb to understand MMP, so shouldn’t we just make it easier? – like FPP! winners/losers – easy!
FPP isn't all that easy to understand. I've spoken to more than one person who remembers voting for that nice Mr Lange despite never having visited Mangere, let alone lived there.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to BenWilson,
The high number of independents is very interesting. 13 elected, with 11.8% of first preferences in total. So on average, somewhat below 1% each. But the Greens totally missing out on 1.8% throws that stat into stark relief.
I'm not sure you can meaningfully group independents like that.
But like I say, with 3 MP constituencies, you're likely to increase disproportionality. I'd be pushing for 4-7 in New Zealand, with 5 or 6 in most.
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Legal Beagle: Voting Referendum: Jus' Sayin', in reply to BenWilson,
I’m struggling to see how 5 MPs can be proportional. If there’s more than 5 parties then some of them have to be excluded no matter how evenly the proportions are distributed.
The general answer is that things tend to even out over the the whole country.
Even with 3-5 MPs per electorate, Ireland does reasonably well on the proportional front. Large parties slightly over-represented, and small parties mostly slightly under-represented but reasonably close.