Posts by Phil Lyth
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aaargh, only noticed after Edit time expired.
Finlayson and Chauvel did NOT oust the incumbent in the electorates they ran in. Would Espiner have barred them too?
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@Gareth, 'And' rather than 'Or'. Gotta aim to have MMP win in 2011 as the first goal.
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I'm not sure it is either but it's the source of considerable grievance in the community (at least to tell from my discussions with relatives etc) If we get to keep MMP by getting rid of that one small issue then I'm all for it!.
Manufactured grievance perhaps, but it is only the trio of Fear Uncertainty and Doubt being fed.
Where is the magic in winning more votes than other candidates in an electorate? My local MP is Dunne, who won with 32.6% of the vote. What mandate is there in less-than-one-third to bar someone else from Parliament?
Where to draw the line. Current MPs like Chris Finlayson and Charles Chauvel were list MPs who ran in a seat but did oust the incumbent. Would Espiner bar them?
And who is a sitting MP? Technically, Dunne was running for a 'new' electorate: the boundaries revision as well as tweaking the boundary also changed the name from Ohariu-Belmont to Ohariu. Would Espiner have given Dunne a Get Out of Jail card?
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@Insider: Already addressed upthread. Yes, you're right, but also Labour and the Greens have spoken in support of the first referendum. So those of us backing MMP want a clear MMP vote (say 55% - 45%) at 2011.
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Bill and Ben party holding the balance of power after the 2008 election
Back to the keyboard after 24 hours away. Nah, urban myth. The National-Act-Maori-United agreements stitched up in November would still have had 65 seats out of 122, a clear majority. So mischief-making by the Short Man.
assuming the lack of threshold didn't affect voting patterns
Too big an assumption to make. In 2008, people who preferred Dunne or Anderton may have been put off giving them a party vote because they were polling so low. Yet, in the absence of a threshold, 7752 more people may have voted to given Anderton a second MP (or 8496 more for Dunne). And equally some of the Bill and Ben people might have voted to get both of them in, or not voted because they did not want protest to translate to seats.
</rant>
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Seeing as people are talking about threshold changes, you may want to look at some numbers DPF ran last month, on the effect of thresholds from 4% to 0% would have had on MMP elections from 1996 - 2008.
If his numbers are accurate (he may be just, y'know, fomenting mischief) then that may inform this debate.
And I agree that people will take any change into account when voting. Those souls who vote NZF would not have to worry about 'will he get 5% or should I vote for another party'. And a protest element might disappear if some voters decided that a protest is one thing, an actual MP is another.
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Russ, how did you do that? The post for this thread is not visible on publicaddress.net/hardnews, but only from the link within your 2.21pm post. Neat
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MMP Redux just can't be one of the options?
Strikes me that this would be like (or worse, perceived to be like) those 1980s/1990s one day cricket tournaments that used to happen in Aussie (have those died away?): the host nation would get to field two teams, Australia and Australia A. That combined with various other tactics, eg the scheduling so only the visiting nations playing on consecutive days, meant everything was rigged for the Aussies.
So don't think MMP Redux would fly as an option.
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I'm guessing the thread should stay live till nearly then …
Section 92 Redux, anyone?
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This suggests an obvious political strategy: Protect MMP, de-elect National.
The problem with that is that other parties are buying into the referendum. Labour and the Greens have come out in support. So it would be a dead rat to swallow to get, say 51% for change in 2011, and to not have a second referendum in 2014.
The better solution is to campaign for a keep-MMP victory in 2011. 55% - 45% has a nice ring to it.
While STV is theoretically appealling, MMP has proven to be robust and workable in practice. So let's keep it.