Posts by Brent Jackson
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Legal Beagle: MMP Review #1: The Party…, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
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?
Would this be smaller or larger than the number of people encouraged to vote since their vote would be much more likely to be counted ? I think smaller, but maybe not. One would hope that some research would be done to determine the best way to implement and advertise this feature, in order to minimise confusion.
-
I thoroughly agree with you Graeme. I am interested in no threshold so as to not disenfranchise voters, but I feel that single MP parties are not really parties at all, so my submission recommended a 2-seat limit as the threshold. This also eliminates the winning of an electorate seat bringing in extra MPs.
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.
If we do have a threshold, then there is another simple change that we can make to avoid disenfranchising voters. Provide a mechanism, whereby a voter can specify a back-up party vote. Should their party vote not be counted due to the party not meeting the threshold, then their back-up vote can be counted. This will allow voters to vote for the party that truly represents them, without running the risk of their vote not counting at all.
The only argument against this that I can see is complexity. Allowing people to write a 'B' (for Back-up) against a party should work well, as 'B' is totally unlike a tick or cross or a 1, which people are likely to use for their primary vote. An alternative would be to number (or assign a letter to) each party, and provide a box at the bottom of the voting paper into which the back-up vote could be written.
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 ?
If not, then I would encourage everyone to include this proposal in their submissions. It should definitely increase the turnout at elections.
-
I think it is important that there is a media watchdog. It is important that mistakes of fact are rectified. Any large media organisation should have to be a member, either compulsorily, or because voluntary membership has compelling reasons. I am unsure as to how “large” and “media” can be precisely defined.
I think it is very important that any correction or retraction must be given the same weighting as the offending item. An error on the front page requires the retraction/correction on the front page. An error in the opening news bulletin => a correction as the opening news bulletin. An error in a promo for the TV news => a retraction/correction in a following promo.
The punishment must be something that the media will strive to avoid, otherwise they will just carry on making mistakes and do the minimum necessary to correct them.
With respect to web-pages, any correction must be annotated as such, say, with a bookmark explaining the reason for the correction (and perhaps describing the period over which the erroneous content was displayed). They should not be allowed to just remove or replace the erroneous information.
-
Registered jobseekers must be a lot lower than actual jobseekers. Anybody out of work whose partner is on a decent salary will not register in any jobseeker statistics. I guess random polling would be required to detect these people.
-
Kai talk
-
Legal Beagle: Paula's Peril; or The…, in reply to Paul Campbell,
I think the threshold should be set to that required to get 2 MPs into the house (somewhere around 1.5%), in order to avoid a proliferation of single MP parties (we get more than enough of those via the electorate votes ;-).
-
Capture: Colour is the new black, in reply to Richard Grevers,
Love those "traffic light" trees. It just so happens that something similar was the Earth Science Picture of the Day yesterday.
Fall colors and subsequent leaf abscission are triggered both by photoperiodism (changing day length) and by decreasing nighttime temperatures. The Chinese pistache featured here is showing centripetal fall color maturation -- the onset of fall coloration occurs from the top down.
-
Capture: Christchurch: Last One Standing, in reply to Alex Efimoff,
I love the photo of plaintive "City Centre" sign - it says so much so simply. Thank you Alex.
-
Heh, I've be doing "Don't buy a paper all year" for years now.
Unfortunately, I've already got 3 other things on on 13-12-11, so I won't be able to make it. I will throw some dollars in the pot though. I've harped on about how piss poor journalism is in New Zealand, so I'd better put some money where my mouth is (or somesuch).
Thank you Jon.
-
Legal Beagle: Election '11 -…, in reply to Geoff Pritchard,
Hans Versluys wrote :
It will do away with the need of an electorate vote as your list nominee gets to be your MP
No. I think you still need your electorate vote to choose your local MP.
Heather Gaye wrote :
I’d feel pretty weird saying I should be able to vote for a specific individual to represent my party preference – after all, that’s partly what the National campaign was based on – that people would ignore politics in favour of a personality. I want to pick a party because I like their policies,...
Good point. However, about 40% of voters already ignore policy and just vote on personality anyway. I don't think this will make matters worse. Party leaders and celebrities already have a huge advantage with name recognition.
Sacha wrote :
Others have pointed out not many voters are likely to be arsed doing that.
I think this is an advantage. Those who feel strongly about list candidates, and bother to make the effort, get to have a say in the result. If a voter doesn't care enough to bother writing a number instead of a tick, then they obviously don't mind who on the list gets in.
Tuo Lei wrote :
A profoundly deaf MP would make a substantial step forward in the political representation of my family and I think that’s a good thing. I am deeply skeptical that this would be possible in a system where she would have to run and do well in a general electorate.
This is a real advantage of my suggestion. List MPs can take on particular advocacy roles for particular (non-geographical) groups of voters, and those voters can then vote for that list MP.
Andrew R2 wrote :
If you don’t like how a party develops its party list or who is on the party list then don’t vote for that party.
We already have an extremely limited selection of parties to vote for. If you were to not vote for a party because there is someone on their list you didn't want in parliament, I think your list of possible parties to vote for would rapidly approach zero. I think very few people choose their party vote based on the make up of the party lists.
Paul Campbell wrote :
AFAIK the parties keep their memberships pretty close, you could probably join them all
I think most parties require you to not be a member of another party when you join.
Bren wrote:
Honestly, I think people will largely just support the default party lists and we won’t see much movement from those.
I agree. STV for the entire list is impractical. It's a matter of coming up with a way for voters to express their views, that is not drowned out by apathy.
Geoff Pritchard wrote :
If those non-votes are just ignored, you end up with a party list decided by a tiny minority of the party’s voters. ... there’s no real improvement over closed lists.
I'm not sure it'd be a tiny minority, but a minority, yes. There would be some improvement. One of the biggest gains would be the fact that each MP can state that they do have a mandate to represent voters. They haven't just been carried into parliament by their party loyalty placing them high on the list.
The biggest downside to some form of open list, is that candidates from the same party could spend time and effort trying to get themselves elected instead of working for the good of the party. That is to say, resources are spent on intra-party campaigning that could better be spent on inter-party campaigning.
Is there some other easy way to have open lists ? The Wikipedia article here makes good reading, and explains where open lists are already used. I quite like the elegance of the way that the arbitrary list works, but in practise I think parties would just fix their list, saying that they know best, and to make it easier for the voters.
The Wikipedia article does suggest an extra wrinkle though : a quota. A certain count (or percentage) is required for the list preference votes to have an effect. This would stop a "tiny minority" from deciding the list make up. Of course, if the quota is set too high, then the whole operation is pretty much negated, as the party list order will dominate.