Posts by Craig Ranapia
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Hard News: The humanity, in reply to Paul Campbell,
I guess there’s also a bit of “oh crap the election is over what do we do now” from a press gallery still running on adrenaline …
Extremely likely -- I'm sure everyone in the Press Gallery was loading up on Red Bull and No-Doze for a return season of Winston's Koalition Kapers (the greatest show on Earth)... which just didn't happen. What's left? From the look of it, a load of "Johnny No-Mates who shouldn't be up so late on a school night" snark directed at David Seymour and an understandable (if dull) level of ebullience among Team National.
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Hard News: The humanity, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Dover Samuels said on NatRad this morning that Labour lost because it “lurched to the left”. Knowing Dover, who party voted for Winston this time round, I’m not even sure he’s right or not.
Honestly, Red, all anyone knows about "why Labour lost" is that National got a lot more votes than everyone else. Anything else is wild surmise, as far as I can see.
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Hard News: The humanity, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
It's not ok to question the Labour Party when John Key has slimed into Parliament as the Government and lets Collins and Williamson back in and still wont tell the truth.
OK, Sofie, I think everyone well and truly gets it that you don't accept the outcome of the election and think everyone who voted for the wrong side is either stupid or malignant but it's never "not OK" to question our political lords and masters.
Would you still agree that when the media is being used to attack the opposition, democracy as a whole suffers?
I will never agree that subjecting our elected representatives to scrutiny and criticism ipso facto hurts democracy. And characterizing the Opposition as "powerless" is just beyond belief.
As I've said, I don't really see the news value in the OTT focus on the leadership of the Labour Party that's, as far as I'm aware, going to be an open question for at least three months even if Paddy Gower gives himself a brain bleed and follows Cunliffe into the loo for a good harangue. But pronouncing the death of democracy is just doubling down on the hyperbole.
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Hard News: The humanity, in reply to linger,
In case you simply don’t see it, the role of journalism should be to hold the powerful – i.e., the government of the day – to account. Not the powerless – among which number we should include Cunliffe at the moment.
Oh, what a load of bullshit. Unless I’ve missed Key declaring that Parliamentary democracy is over in this country, Cunliffe is still the leader of a significant Parliamentary grouping that I hope isn’t going to just fuck off to the pub for the next three years. I DO think there’s a hell of a lot of over-excited hacks trying to beat up a story that isn’t really there (Labour’s leadership is going to be an open question for at least three or four months, as I understand it) let’s not throw too big a pity party here.
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Legal Beagle: Election 2014: the no…, in reply to ,
I don’t really understand how tactical voting isn’t isn’t tribal. Voting for your local MP, even if the polls tell you it’s futile, because they represent your ideology isn’t tribal, it’s just being truthful. And trust me, that’s a more sustainable way of being.
Yes! And it's more than a little obnoxious to bitch people for, you know, casting their electorate vote for the person on the ballot they thought would be the best MP. Perhaps I'm biased by Bolger's treatment of Mark Thomas, but perhaps the media-political complex need to get the fuck out of their Beltway bubble and stop treating voters like silly little "sheeple" who need to do what they're told by their betters. Seriously. Cut that shit out.
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Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to Kumara Republic,
And Danyl @ the DimPost also agrees, saying that stability and coherence are bigger voter magnets than good policy and values.
To be fair, not quite what he was arguing there. I agree with him that for non-tribal voters, policy doesn't mean a great deal if (fairly or not) the parties concerned are seen as incompetent, scary and prone to being the political equivalent of the Saw franchise. And that's not only true of the left -- I'm not being facetious when I say Tony Blair's biggest ally was the Tories, who seemed determined to make themselves incrreasingly unelectable, and don't even get me started on the ALP. When you're making Tony Abbot look an attractive proposition by comparison, you're doing EVERYTHING wrong.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Kumara Republic,
It’s more a case of those who voted for the Ohariu Labour & Green candidates either not grasping tactical voting, or being blindly tribalistic in their voting.
Or, to float a completely cray-cray idea, they actually voted for the candidate they thought would have been the best Member of Parliament out of the candidates on offer. (I don't know because of that tiresome secret ballot thing, and neither do you.) If you want to bitch someone, why don't you piss on the parties who put them on the ballot in the first place instead of condescending to voters in a manner I'm beginning to find rather obnoxious.
I'm really sorry a plurality of voters didn't put their ticks where you'd prefer they do, but welcome to my world in 1999, 2002 and 2005. It happens; I hope everyone gets through their grieving process soon.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Emma Hart,
Do you think people who don’t have ID shouldn’t be able to vote?
There's also serious penalties for impersonating an elector for the purposes of committing electoral fraud, and there are mechanisms in place to detect said fraud which is incredibly rare.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to izogi,
Aside from what Emma said, the issue’s also not limited to abuse. Any occasion when a voter thinks others might treat them differently if they vote in a certain way risks coercing them to vote in that way if there’s a possibility that others might find out how they’ve voted.
It’s also worth remembering what the introduction of the secret ballot in 1870 replaced:
The New Zealand Parliament – alarmed by reports of electoral abuses in Auckland – soon decided that the electoral laws needed tightening up.
So in 1858 it passed a series of reform acts, which defined and prohibited treating, bribery and ‘undue influence’. Candidates were banned from employing musicians and displaying banners. The placement of committee rooms and polling booths in pubs was also outlawed.
At the time, some politicians urged the adoption of the secret ballot (often called the ‘Australian’ or ‘Victorian’ ballot, as it was first adopted in Victoria in 1856). They claimed that this would help stamp out bribery, treating and intimidation – because there would be less incentive to try to influence or threaten electors if their votes could not be traced.
But not everyone thought that voting should be secret. To many, the vote was not an individual right but an important ‘public trust’ granted to certain citizens to exercise on behalf of their community. Open (public) voting ensured that the holders of this trust were accountable to those who were excluded from the franchise – including, for example, women.
In 1858 Parliament introduced a new verbal voting system. Each elector was required to state the name of the candidate he wished to vote for out loud to the polling official. The official would then record the vote in a poll book, and the elector would sign his name alongside the entry.
This method, its supporters claimed, would at least require the elector to be sober enough to speak. Of course verbal voting was not secret – in 1860 one Auckland newspaper even published a list showing how every elector had voted.
FWIW, I party voted National and don't give the proverbial rat's arse what you all think about it. It's also helpful that I live in a country where it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of political opinion. But the point here is that I choose to disclose who I vote for, otherwise it's none of your fucking business. As it should be.
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Hard News: Five further thoughts, in reply to ,
And, I will not be shutting the fuck up about that in the foreseeable.
Like I'd even try to make that happen around here. :) In the end, it's rather unlikely the seat is going to flip on specials so Davies can suck up whatever criticism comes his way, like every other MP.