Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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Hard News: Belief Media, in reply to Russell Brown,
There are few things more bound to our sense of national identity than Anzac Day, and yet it is really not a Christian occasion.
The last ANZAC Dawn Ceremony I attended had opening and closing prayers, a benediction, someone else I can't remember the name of, the Lord's Prayer and was officiated over by whoever was leading the Wellington Combined Churches, as well as having three hymns (four if you count the National Hymn).
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
Actually, it is around half this. In 1999, United NZ would have attained a seat with only 11065 votes, and last year the ALCP would have done the same with only 11738 seats.
You missed this bit: allocated by the modified Sainte Laguë method.
They were still wrong, but not by nearly as much :-)
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p.s. you are all doing a pretty good job so far of helping to cease my wavering :-)
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to BenWilson,
Is there a PR system out there with a much larger parliament and no threshold?
There are 400 members of the South African lower house elected under closed-list proportional representation (200 from provincial lists, 200 from national lists).
At the last election in 2009, the following parties were elected:
African National Congress - 264 seats
Democratic Alliance - 67 seats
Congress of the People - 30 seats
Inkatha Freedom Party - 18 seats
Independent Democrats - 4 seats
United Democratic Movement - 4 seats
Freedom Front Plus - 4 seats
African Christian Democratic Party - 3 seats
United Christian Democratic Party - 2 seats
Pan Africanist Congress - 1 seat
Minority Front - 1 seat
Azanian People's Organisation - 1 seat
African People's Convention - 1 seat13 other parties received no seats.
The African People's Convention (the lowest successful party) received 35,867 votes (0.20%).
Does it have a high proportion of tiny parties?
In New Zealand, 2.48% of MPs represent a party with only one member. In South Africa, only 1% of MPs do. If we follow South Africa's method, and have no threshold, we can expect therefore to have a de facto one party state, and a reduction in the number of parties in Parliament :-)
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #2: Dual Candidacy, in reply to Andrew Geddis,
As for the idea that forcing electorate candidates to rely only on winning their seats to return to Parliament will somehow encourage them to become more independent/prepared to buck their parties – why will it work now when (as you note) it didn’t under the old FPP system?
Except maybe it did work under first past the post. Maybe the reason National or Labour never even adopted some policy was because electorate members in marginal seats who feared for their jobs spoke out loudly in caucus, in a way that they're possibly discouraged from doing now because those who stand up to party leadership risk having their list ranking suffer?
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #2: Dual Candidacy, in reply to Jake Pollock,
Why should the Rotary give you a platform at their meet the candidates evening if you’re not a candidate and the race has been limited to people who want to represent the electorate?
Because the reason why groups like Rotary Clubs run meet the candidate meetings is to inform the public about voting. If someone happens to be running a "meet the candidates and talk only about local issues and no-one mention the party vote" forum, then there won't be a reason to have . At the 1999 election, National didn't stand a candidate in Wellington Central, but Annabel Young still attended the candidates forum I went to.
And last year, the candidates forum I went to, in an electorate where United Future wasn't running a candidate still included someone on the party list.
There will be some organisers who don't want to invite list-only candidates. When people realise that the meetings aren't very interesting or useful when many of the parties aren't present, that will stop.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Gareth Ward,
Regarding your broader point, perhaps we should be asking why the workings of Parliament make 1 or 2 MPs so hamstrung in executing their mandate and if there aren’t improvements to be made?
I don't think the major problems are the workings of Parliament. There simply aren't enough hours in the day.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Brent Jackson,
Incidentally, is there anything in the calculation that requires the threshold to be a %age rather than a number of seats ? I think discussing it as a seat limit is a much better idea, and I would like a 2 or 3 seat limit.
No. You could do that calculation once. Exclude all parties that get less than 2 or less than 3 seats and do it again.
Or you could set it at a fixed number of votes. Or a proportion of votes for the largest party, or whatever.
This mechanism should have little effect on the counting of votes, since it is likely to be used by only a small minority of voters.
Can anyone see any other drawbacks ?
The main drawback is confusion. Not just in the voting booth, but if the public advertising campaign mentions things like this might some people be scared off from voting/registering altogether?
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Sam Hill,
I don’t see why the Greens for instance, can win only 11.06% of the party vote, yet be awarded more list seats than Labour?
Because it's the party vote, not the list vote. The party vote determines how many MPs each party has.
Under Supplementary Member, the list vote determines how many list MPs each party has. But supplementary member is not MMP.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Steve Curtis,
I dont see a different threshold for Maori interest parties would be required as there are Maori seats which allow a functioning party which doesnt reach the 2.5% level. This occurred in 2008 and 2011.
The recommendation of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System that there should be a threshold waiver for Maori interest parties was on the basis that they were recommending the abolition of separate Maori seats.