Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Without going down the rabbit hole, do you believe that we should then adopt the American/French system where the head of government (an even more important post) is also elected directly by the 'people'.
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Incidentally, it would be interesting how NZ would elect an executive president (or directly elected PM, put another way) using STV.
In current conditions, I'd think that NZ First would be the first major party eliminated. Should National lack an overall majority (with ACT and Dunne preferences, and assuming all Green prefs went to Labour), the NZF preferences would determine the result: if National has 45% of the vote and NZF 10%, they would need half the NZF preferences to win.
(Compared with MMP on the same numbers, where they could win with 40% and the support of Winston Peters).
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Legal Beagle: Voting in an STV election, in reply to Steve Todd,
So, avoiding technicalities:
- Burlington has a substantial natural majority for the liberal-left.
- there was a right-wing candidate and two left wing candidates.
- because of this, the Republican candidate led the first round. The Democrat was eliminated.
- Both the Republican and the Progressive’s second preferences were of no consequence. The Progressive candidate won on the Democrat’s 2nd preferences, I presume.Apart from not winning, (as they would in a split vote under FPP), the Republican voters might have been peeved that the most left-wing candidate was elected when they preferred the Democrat.
As you say, the Republicans could have achieved their preferred outcome by giving their first round vote tactically to the Democrat.
Are there any voting systems that would avoid that and consider the Republican’s preferences?
(I’d note that an indirect election would be fairer here in a couple of ways:
- a council would be elected with members split maybe 39/34/27 R/VPP/D
- the council would probably elect a mayor from the left of centre with broad support
- the Republicans could influence that process
- the Republicans would also be able to work with one of the left of centre parties on particular issues
=> hence, each party would have influence commensurate with their vote) -
Ministers don't need to be professionally or academically qualified in their field, they just need to receive and act on a range of sensible advice. (Bill English isn't an economist, nor was Michael Cullen [he was an economic historian]. Neither Gerry Brownlee or Phil Goff have ever been in the military, and so on.)
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I suspect the switch from trolley buses to battery buses is happening about now
I'm suspecting a bogus greenwash here and have seen no evidence that fossil fuel usage will be reduced rather than increased by the introduction of hybrid buses.
Do these buses really have the battery capacity to run for a day, even with some of them being taken off-road for staggered charge around lunchtime?
I also haven't seen any plans for charging => the Eastern suburbs, where a lot of Wellington's buses are garaged, is on a spur of the electricity network that's close to capacity - if they expected to charge hundreds of buses, then I'd think we'd hear about a new 33kV interconnector being built, and I haven't.
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possession attracts a civil fine, like a traffic ticket
Which might encourage cops to set up checkpoints and search every likely looking vehicle, or scour student residences with drug dogs in order to fill their ticket quota and bring money in. (That sort of thing has been reported in US states with an infringement regime for cannabis).
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Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore
One out and out dictatorship, one disguised dictatorship, a newish democracy and us.
It's obviously harder to do free trade agreements with countries where the people have some input in choosing their governments.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
There are some identity political people who will find your use of the term 'geek' offensive. As a reclaimed term of abuse, it can only really be used from within the geek community: so you shouldn't be using it without unless you either have a BSc in a technical subject or have reached a fairly high level on a canonical online game.
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Sacha,
Depends: what are the ethical issues with selling a car with drum brakes? - at the limit, they're going to fail to stop and crash into people in circumstances where ABS disks would have pulled the car up in time. The defence is that the transport authorities have decided they are an adequate cost/safety trade off. Same with self driving cars, the transport authorities will define minimal standards (as they do with self-driving aircraft and trains).
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It seems odd that somebody would go to the trouble of embarking on a political career and then turn it into being a bit of a general joke – see also every NZ First MP apart from Peters. Wouldn’t you want to be thought of as notable for achieving something?