Posts by Graeme Edgeler
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The Herald made the point that the biggest party not getting into the government would cause discontent.
To be fair, tha discontent is also a pretty big reason why we got MMP. Disgust that one party could get more votes than the other and not govern was a major force in getting the Royal Commission on the Electoral System.
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Once in a while The Standard can have some genuinely informative postings.
Let's not forget to pause to note their overtaking of public address in the NZ blog rankings :-)
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This doesn't technically rule out abstention, but I can't really imagine them doing that either.
I can ... but perhaps not to allow National to govern. If National forms a coalition which will get the support of the House (maybe they don't even need the support of the Maori Party), I would say that it is possible that they'll then add a Green abstention to the top of it in exchange for a couple of specific policies (something like the phasing out of battery hens and sow crates).
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its done this way AIUI because there are questions whether entrenchment can really be done in a Westminster system anyway, since no parliament can bind its successor...
Not really. It's been an argument in the past, but it's now pretty much accepted that Parliament can bind its successors - Bills of Rights and international human rights obligations being top of the list. They might ignore them later, but they're ignoring binding obligations.
MMP isn't entrenched, for example. Neither is the principle of responsible government (Ministers must be MPs), or even the existence of Parliament itself.
Missed this earlier :-)
Allowing Parliament to entrench its own existence is a little problematic - if Parliament can entrench itself then it can abolish itself, and Lord Cooke might have had a problem with that.
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You might want to read s168 a little more closely; it doesn't prescribe the form of the ballot paper at all.
Indeed I might - it's been a while since I have. It makes sense actually - the secret ballot seems a reasonable thing to protect by entrenchment (which seems to have been reserved for things the absence of which might threaten democracy).
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having lived under prop13 in California (a bad law that was entrenched at 66% with a 50% vote and has hamstrung the state for a generation)
Proposition 13 passed with 65% support. And the 50% support it needed was because it was voter-approved. The same applies in New Zealand - amendment to entrenched provisions, or creation of them (as we did in 1993 when we approved MMP) can be done by a bare majority in a referendum - it's just that it takes 75% of Parliament to overrule that 50% of the public.
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They could move to suspend under SO 4, but that's getting very dodgy (akin to circumventing the curent entrenchment by temporarily repealing it).
That's not getting very dodgy - that would be the start (or conclusion) of a long train of abuses.
If anyone ever moves to suspend standing order 267, at the very least they will have lost my vote until not one of the MPs who supported that action is even a candidate.
MMP isn't entrenched, for example.
Close, though. The form of the ballot paper (i.e. a party vote and electorate vote) is entrenched. We could go to supplementary member (with electorates defined as now) without messing with entrenchment, but not to much else (first past the post or STV, for example, would be out).
We could certainly gut MMP (a 15% threshold?), but at present,we can't really be rid of it.
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To me when they figure it out, they should take 120, remove the overhang MPs from the number, and then proportionalise the remainder. So your party vote might figure out 115 MPs, and then the overhangs are the other 5.
It would still be very likely to be proportional, but would discontinue this bizarre random size parliament we have.
Interestingly, that is exactly what happens if an independent wins an electorate seat (or an electorate seat is won by a member of a party that doesn't submit a list).
You can make arguments either way, but it is, however, less proportionate. Party X gets 50% of the vote - in a 120 seat Parliament you expect them to get 60 seats, with a 4 seat "overhang", operating this way they'd get 58 seats.
It's a solution to a fluctuating Parliament, but it doesn't address the main problem that arises when a Party receives more electorate seats than its party votes would otherwise entitle it.
Interestingly, the size of Parliament used to fluctuate under first past the post (though before the election, not because of it). It was set at 80 in (I think) 1902), but for 1969, rose to 84, 3 years later rose to 87, in 1978 rose to 92, in 1984 to 95, in 1987 to 97 and only hit the pre-MMP 99 in 1993.
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so. we make the number of electorates X/2 where X is the number of seats and allow X/2 number of list seats
One seat is equal to 2(X/100) and the cut off is 2%.
Does that work?not really (you're not talking about getting rid MMP are you - those would be numbers under supplementary member).
Under MMP, if there are 100 seats, then 1 seat is 1% of that. It doesn't matter whether that seat is a list seat or an electorate, it's still a seat.
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And insert a "not" in there too. Do'h!