Posts by BenWilson
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Can we get some grown-ups in here…
Lots of people do deface the ballot paper so it's a good point. There could be a useful discussion in ways to make that a choice that doesn't really stand against compulsory voting. Perhaps there could be a box provided for creative drawing, along with some crayons. It could make for a lot more confusion, though, it would need to be clear what drawing in the box meant, and how it would be different (if it was different) from drawing outside the box. Or then again, KISS, just ignore donkey votes, after counting them as such.
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Lisa Black,
It’s not that hard to get out of jury duty.
Yes, it's more trouble than going to a booth and ticking "I don't want to vote", which is a perfectly valid choice. In the case of jury duty you either have to actually have a good reason, or tell a good lie.
If Australia has had compulsory voting for a century, why is their politics so dysfunctional and toxic?
It's still a pretty good place to live, though, particularly for Australians. And I don't think it's the compulsory voting that makes their politics seem toxic. They do have other problems, but this isn't one of them.
Forcing someone that has no interest or knowledge in voting to vote (even if none-of-the-above style options are available) will merely encourage politicians and the media towards lowest-common-denominator methods aimed at simply having a name that people recognise on the paper.
We already have this. It's actually an argument against democracy, rather than compulsory voting.
The claimed logic of compulsory voting being an extension to the right to vote is pretty weak in this piece. Largely since this logic put forward appears somewhat circular – I assume everyone should vote therefore an obligation to participate is an extension of the right to vote.
That's not the only reason given, but it is a reasonable question. My response is to say that exactly the same circularity applies when insist that non-compulsory voting is better, because compulsory is bad. It's not true in all cases. We are under a great many compulsions, many of them for very good reasons.
Whether you agree with them or not, most of the people involved in this campaign sincerely feel that voting lends spurious legitimacy to successive governments that have consistently failed to address the needs of the poor.
It's a whole lot more legitimacy than the other way. Democracy is not sufficient, but it is necessary, for good government, and the same goes for voting in a democracy.
it privileges form (high turnout) over substance (motivating people to participate in politics and the political process).
The non-compulsory does that too, and the reason that both do it is because there is no requirement that your vote have substance, reason or anything else. It just has to be entered correctly on the ballot paper.
Well,if I just draw a cock on my ballot paper rather than not turning up because I can’t afford to pay the fine or would rather not end up with a court date what exactly have we learned?
That you strongly don't want to vote, rather than just being too lazy, or too put upon by other duties, to vote. In fact it means you don't want to vote even more strongly, since you made the effort that goes well beyond a couple of ticks. It could be worth having more than one kind of refusal to vote, and actual donkey votes should be counted separately. There's a great deal to be learned about why people don't vote, and it's something that really does matter. It matters at least as much as the compulsory census data that we routinely collect, compulsorily.
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Bingo, Keith. All of it.
That the combination of sophisticated polling and focus-grouping (Hi David!)
What's the left wing version of Curia? If there is none, does anyone want to start one? I'm keen.
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In case it's not clear, I'm in favour of compulsory voting.
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Lisa Black,
Forced engagement sounds, well, un-New Zealand.
We do it for juries.
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Speaker: Compulsory voting and election turnout, in reply to Matt C,
But what if the issue is that most ppl are not voting through system disaffection. how would compulsion change that?
Well an obvious idea is that disaffection could be an option on the ballot. "No confidence" or something like it. It wouldn't change them being disaffected, but we would at least know that being disaffected is why they voted that way.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to David Hood,
Far out, so the wooden spoon goes to Tamaki Makaurau. Less than half of the Maori enrolled in Auckland showed up to vote.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
Beautiful. Can visually see that we really should be counting not-enrolled when doing our non-participation stats, since that's the fourth biggest party after Labour and ahead of the Greens.
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Just thinking back to 2002 for a minute, I can't honestly remember any phase of soul-searching by the right after being faced with the colossal loss under English. Not in the sense of looking for their values anyway. I was on Kiwiblog a lot because PAS didn't even exist. The whole thing was just to go harder, stay on message more, sell more sausages at party sizzles, raise more funds etc. All very businesslike, if you count ranting at socialists a form of business. If we're going to draw lessons, that's one I can pretty clearly remember.
They didn't search for their souls because that would be futile. Not because they've got no souls (undecided on that), but because even if they do, the search is futile. It's not their souls they want to find, it's the levers of power.
I'm not sure I think this is something to learn from. But take it how you will.
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Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to barnaclebarnes,
I’m wondering if the Greens ran truly independent what their party vote would be? There a lot of Blue/Green would be voters out there. How many votes would they pick up from National voters and how many would they loose from Labour? Has anybody done the sums on this? More than one National voter I have spoken with would have voted Green if they had not ruled out working with National.
If there was a credible leftist alternative to the Greens this would make perfect sense. That almost happened. They'd have lost my vote, but could just as easily pitch for some free market person who still thinks the market will save the planet, and no actual total support would have been lost, and we'd be all round happy. They could be environmentalists rather than half-socialists, and actual socialists would have somewhere to go. All finished now.
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