Hard News: Don't bother voting
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then I'm even happier that the Greens have come out in support of National.
I'm thinking you meant "have ruled out support of National"?
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And seems rather unclear on the notion that Labour and the Greens are actually two different parties, and Labour would be exceedingly foolish to take the Greens for granted.
Given that the Greens have ruled out a coalition with National and expressed a desire to support a Labour government if possible, I don't think anyone's being overly presumptuous.
The Maori Party is a different matter of course.
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Steve - brilliant! If ACT was in government, that would be "bring down the government" material.
I, for one, would be shouting "corruption!", "conflict of interest!" and/or "technical breach!" from the highest towers in the land.
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The guy sitting next to me on the train says "Yeah so the serious fraud office cleared him, so that was good. I just gave him both my votes in me special. Wife wasn't too happy, but ohwellnevermind." Whips out his paper. "Anyway, guess I better study me nags."
Then, after a silent couple of minutes, apropos nothing: "That Rodney Hide's a bloody wanker, isn't he?"
Gamblin' man. Ya just gotta love it. Winston's better than Larry Hagman ever was.
And yeah, gonna be a regula on nzonscreen.
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WRT to the NZFirst decision, does this mean that Key can form a coalition with them now? I seem to remember an "out" clause in his original statement seeming to rule on that option.
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If this is an example of how they are going to govern ...
Well, yeah. Given the way they've also explicitly politicised the Super Fund, I'd think some National voters might be concerned too.
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WRT to the NZFirst decision, does this mean that Key can form a coalition with them now? I seem to remember an "out" clause in his original statement seeming to rule on that option.
I'd love to be a party to the phone call where Key asked him for coalition support ...
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If any party ends up with over 50% of the vote but can't form the govt due to the overhang I am going to be extremely pissed off.
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I seem to remember an "out" clause in his original statement
A lot of statements since then have been less equivolcal.
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Tony Ryall avoided the question this morning's interview about the "interference with Pharmac". Talked about everything else but that. Hence it could be assumed that they feel that there is danger in that aspect, otherwise why not come out and say yes?
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... and again now. "Ruled out working with NZ First" sez RNZ
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If any party ends up with over 50% of the vote but can't form the govt due to the overhang I am going to be extremely pissed off.
What if part of the overhang wants to help form the government - i.e. Peter Dunne? Should he resign his seat if he doesn't get enough party votes? Or just say "Sorry, I can't be part of any majority, I've got no right to be here, please ignore me".
I so want that pompous preacher to be an overhang. That would just be brilliant.
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Remind me again why he supposed to be revered?
With the passing of Sir Ed, Sir Bob has ascended to the hallowed post of National Curmudgeon.
(With strong competition from Sirs Brian Lochore & Colin Meads).
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If any party ends up with over 50% of the vote but can't form the govt due to the overhang I am going to be extremely pissed off.
I wrote a long post about the Maori seats a couple of days ago, for the Australian blog Larvatus Prodeo, where Idiot / Savant and I are blogging the NZ election for the benefit of the Aussies. I put it up at my own place too: Are the Maori seats undemocratic?
Here's what I wrote about the overhang:
Alternatively, you could argue that overhangs frustrate the will of the electorate, as expressed in the party vote. They are a bug in the MMP system. However, I don’t see them so much as a bug as, if not a feature, simply a consequence of being committed to ensuring that people from diverse communities in New Zealand are represented in the parliament. Further, our electoral system is not designed to reflect exact proportionality - we would need to have many, many more MPs in order to do that, or a parliament comprising the whole population. The system is designed, like other voting systems, to come up with a fair and defensible and it comes up with about the right result. (This is exactly what’s going on with STV in Australian elections: it’s fair enough, and defensible, and achieves around about the right result.) Not perfect, but jolly well good enough to be part of a democratic system.
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I'd love to be a party to the phone call where Key asked him for coalition support ...
"Hello Winston. I need someone to close the FTA deal with the USA. I wonder if you have anyone in mind?"
I think that would do it...
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Given the way they've also explicitly politicised the Super Fund, I'd think some National voters might be concerned too.
Like me.
I was leaning their way up to a couple of weeks ago. Kiwisaver + R&D + SuperFund + No Parole + Pharmac has removed that option for me. -
With the passing of Sir Ed, Sir Bob has ascended to the hallowed post of National Curmudgeon.
I am astounded you would put the two names in the same sentence. When was Sir Ed a curmudgeon?
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Not perfect, but jolly well good enough to be part of a democratic system.
Quite. Thus, a party with 5% of the vote gets several seats, while one with 4.9% (and no constituency win) gets nothing. It's not just overhang that will get you some skewing.
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Duncan Garner: SHOCK NEWS, LEADING GREENS CANDIDATE REVERSES COALITION POSITION. FILM AT 11!
Heh. Whoops. Yeah, I meant "have ruled out support of National" as Mark surmised.
Given the way they've also explicitly politicised the Super Fund, I'd think some National voters might be concerned too
It depends how they structure it. If it's something like "Your target is x% investment in NZ, and if you have a choice between NZ vs overseas investment with similar risk/return profiles, then choose the NZ or be prepared to explain why not", where the fund was basically told to invest in NZ where it makes sense, but still remained independent, I'd be pretty happy.
But if this is a way for the government to fund pet projects then, yeah, we can do without this kind of politicisation.
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The phoney electorate battles are much worse than the overhang.
Knowing that Richard Worth is meant to lose, and that he knows, his opponents know, everyone knows, but in Epsom they still go through the charade of an election, in which every party except ACT wants you to vote for somebody else's candidate!
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Hmmm, well, I'm not convinced.
One of the reasons we went away from FPP was that it was widely perceived as scandalous & unethical that Labour could gain more votes than national and still not gain the seats to govern.
The idea that any party that reaches over 50% of the vote can be kept out by a group of small parties is one I have real ethical difficulty with.
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The Herald's editorial this morning says that failng "some cataclysmic occurrence, an event resounding enough to shatter the current template", the 2008 general election is over and National has won.
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding of MMP around. Even Mary Wilson, last night questioned the 'morality' of a major party with more votes losing the election. I'm sure the Nats also haven't quite got their heads around the communal nature of MMP yet.
On a lighter note, here's the Council of Trade Union's utube first election offering.
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The idea that any party that reaches over 50% of the vote can be kept out by a group of small parties is one I have real ethical difficulty with.
Maybe they need to make a bigger effort to make friends then, so that they will have someone to play with in the big house.
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Michael
Do you mean votes cast, or votes counted?
It is almost impossible for National to miss out if they get 50% of votes cast.
"Votes counted" brings up the issue of wasted votes, as previously mentioned. That must be more undemocratic, surely.
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Anyone who wants to complain about MMP has to go through me first! I grew up on North Shore where National could put up a dead dog as their candidate and it would still win the seat. And now I have the joy of living in Rodney with Lockwood Smity. Sigh! So, at least with MMP I get a say with my party vote. Long live MMP. I do, however, agree with the idea that a minority party should have to get 5% or TWO electorate candidates to qualify for their percentage of vote. Strike Peter Dunne, Jim Anderton, Winston, Rodney. Less skew and better representation of what people probably want.
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