Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Sacha,
Good work
It's pretty long though. ACT is so much easier. Join the fun in helping them rebrand. My favorite on #actnames so far is "Reserve Banks ACT", but there's other goodies too.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Just between us, Ben, apart from some mild mischief from the Prime Minister (in response to a question and entirely aware, I think, he’s not got a lot of pull in the Labour caucus) nobody in National cares right now.
I very much doubt that.
Now, if that spit ball was directed at me
It was not. You voted Green, didn't you? Oh, and the irrelevant electorate vote for National (no more irrelevant than my casting for Shearer, who would have got in anyway).
As a citizen, not a partisan, I actually need a competent non-bugfuck opposition every bit as much as a competent non-bugfuck government. It’s the optimal setting for a House of Representatives/
It's an interesting reason to vote against the party you've supported for years. I presume something about the purported centrism of Key didn't wash with you?
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I've never, ever, had the slightest wait in polling. It seems massively overstaffed, not that I'm complaining, I certainly don't want to wait.
I always try to make it worth the time of the bored people there by asking a few silly questions that I could surely work out myself in seconds.
"Where do I post it?"
"Over there, the boxes on the left, with Mt Albert written in big letters on the front of them"
"Oh, who are the boxes on the right for?"
"People in New Lynn, like it says in big letters on the front of the box"
"You mean this station is for BOTH electorates?"
"Yes, we're right on the border"
"Where is the border?"
<pause, eyes light up a little>
"Well, the boundaries aren't straight lines. We are technically in New Lynn here"
"Yes, that's quite weird, isn't it, my house is way closer than Lynnmall, but I'm in Mt Albert"
"Rosebank Peninsular, eh? That's the weirdest kink in the Mt Albert Electorate of all"
"You guys have to keep this up until 7? Long day! Been busy so far?"
"Nah. You're rush hour. And we don't stop at 7. That's just when we shut the doors"
"Oh, of course, I guess it's not much use if you don't count them"
"Not much"
"Well, cheers, I better go vote. You're not missing much outside, it's windy and cold out there"
<several scrutineer eyes dart towards me>
"Heh, best not mention the weather, today is SERIOUS!"
<vote>
<accidentally wander behind all other voters>
<mischievous thought occurs, and I wander hesitantly toward the New Lynn boxes and reach slowly out, look back at the woman, who is watching me with crossed arms. I make a few jabbing motions at the box until she cracks a smile, then turn and post in the Mt Albert boxes>
<stick "I've voted" on, walk to the door - the sticker blows straight off my chest and sticks to the door>
<civic duty discharged>
<1 minute later, the afterglow fades. I want to vote again, that shit is just too weak>
<I settle for coffee instead> -
The concern trolling I'm seeing most often at the moment is coming from National, telling Labour how it ought to reform. I don't have any advice for National myself, other than fuck off.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Rich Lock,
You might have to expand on that one a bit, Graeme. In this case I'm not willing to assume I know what you're driving at.
Me neither. If this was the USA, I'd presume he meant money spent on the military. But this country spends the least it can possibly get away with on its military.
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Legal Beagle: Referendum '11: counting…, in reply to Tim Hannah,
Knowing if someone voted is a whole lot easier - they're crossed off the roll. But not how they voted.
It's not easy, but it must be possible, otherwise, upon being challenged, they could simply lie about who they voted for. Then if they were found to be invalid, they actually strike a blow at the party they didn't vote for.
We do have a free and fair system, and the facts that the votes are tracked is very hard to subvert casually. If however, by some horrid chance, a criminal, fascist aligned organization grew to any appreciable size in NZ, it would be perfectly possible for them to steal the ballots for an entire electorate, and work out how every individual in an electorate voted. Much of the way our system works isn't about designing foolproof systems, it's about the society itself being fair and open, on the whole. Lose that, and it doesn't matter what system you're using.
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Hard News: Democracy Night, in reply to Sacha,
Depends which 'they' you mean. Way more people visit the CBD for work or play than live there.
I meant residents of the electorate "Auckland Central", which was how this digression began. I don't really want to continue with it, it's not of much relevance to this thread. It's only really of use in maybe adding a little bit to the understanding of why Auckland Central isn't hugely keen on Labour. A far bigger factor is likely to be the fact that it's the most expensive property in the country, chock full of property millionaires, so CGT could cost them hugely, and the tax cuts by National delivered them heaps.
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Legal Beagle: Referendum '11: counting…, in reply to Emma Hart,
Well don't get tooooo cocky about it. After voting on Saturday, I absentmindedly walked to the ballet box behind all the other people who were voting. I could easily have looked at the way 6 random strangers were voting. I didn't, of course, why would I give a stuff?
You have to have the ballot paper. What kind of "casual prying" involves stealing ballot papers?
Yes, as I said. If you wanted to pry, you'd have to be pretty serious about it. This isn't a country that lends itself to such things, for starters because most people will just tell you how they voted anyway if you ask. The only serious voter intimidation we have is quite hard to stop - people denying others the right to vote at all, as some cults do. Maybe some abusive spouses too. Don't really know.
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The only reason I was sure that it is possible to track people down (without knowing the mechanism) is that a cousin of mine who lived with my family for a while was in the Wairarapa when the famous one-vote majority for Wyatt Creech was returned, and was challenged in court by Reg Boorman as a student living in Wellington to prove that he really had the right to vote in the electorate. This happened to many people. There would be no point in a challenge if it was impossible to know which way the person had voted.
He also told me a friend of his from a staunch Labour family also found out that their son had lied about voting in the election, telling all his mates that it didn't matter if you voted, the differences were always huge, and he'd gone off and got stoned instead. Apparently he copped an emotional thrashing for it for years from his dad. Silly really, Labour thrashed National overall. It always struck me as a good story about intergenerational perspectives on voter apathy.
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Legal Beagle: Referendum '11: counting…, in reply to Emma Hart,
That it's not possible to work out who you voted for is one of the basic corner-stones of our electoral system. And in New Zealand, thankfully, we weight this more highly than preventing possible voter fraud.
But you just described exactly how to find out. Peel off the sticker on the ballot, read the number, look up the stub with that number, read the page and line number, then look up the person.
The method is a bit more circuitous than what I described, and that's a good thing, it makes casual prying near impossible. But, and this is the point I was asking, it's not expensive. So it's not really justified not to do it, on cost alone, when the outcome of not being able to do it might possibly mean having to run the entire referendum all over again, because it would be impossible to be sure if it was fair in a close run thing.
Mind you, the logistics of recounting a nationwide referendum and then challenging practically every voter in the country, make me see why they figured it's a cost saving that no one is ever really going to care about.
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