How do we get more people out to vote?

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Forums › Politics › How do we get more people out to vote?

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131 posts

Master Geek
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#1134588 23-Sep-2014 14:28

im 68 and have been voting since i turned 21 and have not missed voting in a general election,i would love to see online voting for the next election,i can not understand why some people are against online voting,when every one can do so much online these days,if its good enough to do the census every 5yrs why not online election voting?and the reason for myself voting is i WANT to and no other reason.

ubergeeknz

3344 posts

Uber Geek
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Vocus

#1134594 23-Sep-2014 14:37

happyone65: im 68 and have been voting since i turned 21 and have not missed voting in a general election,i would love to see online voting for the next election,i can not understand why some people are against online voting,when every one can do so much online these days,if its good enough to do the census every 5yrs why not online election voting?and the reason for myself voting is i WANT to and no other reason.

Very little to be gained from gaming a census.

Everything to be gained from gaming a General Election.

That is the difference.

bazzer

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#1134607 23-Sep-2014 14:56

PhantomNVD:
bazzer:
PhantomNVD: gotta say I do think a vote lottery would work very well, but as someone who DID 'bother' to vote and somehow "wasted" my vote on a party that was not elected I'm very intrigued with the STV concept.

I think I'd also like the barrier to representation on MMP to be proportional to the seats... if there are (rounded) 200 MP's chosen, then each 1% of the vote should allocate 2 MPs. thus the farce of "7% of the voting turnout was 'wasted' anyway" would be done away with, and I might be more inclined to 'bother' to vote next time too!

This is exactly how it works. With our current system, you "only" have to get 0.83% (probably more like 0.42% if they round up the number of seats) of the vote to get each of your party's seats in Parliament. To minimise fragmentation you need to have a threshold. It doesn't really do anyone any good to have a bunch of parties with a single MP. Legalise Cannabis very nearly got enough support to "earn" a seat and they only got 8,500 votes!

but how do they 'almost' get a seat with .83 and conservative NOT get even one with 4.1???
is it then worth a party 'pooling' their votes in a small area to get the area rep to be an MP? Is this how the Mauri Party get their seat with so many fewer voters - voter concentration?

That's the thresholds I'm talking about. They're important I think, but I don't know if 5% or 1 electorate seat are necessarily the right thresholds.

It's (deemed) important to people to be able to vote for someone in their local area to represent their interests (electorate seats). The party vote doesn't matter for these and I don't think you can really take these away from people who don't get the required party vote (I guess this only applied to Peter Dunne this time around).

As for your second point, that is exactly what happens. National tells its supporters to vote for the ACT guy in Epsom so they'll pass the threshold and then their party vote comes in to play (not this time, but you get the idea). I believe this is why Internet Mana got together, assuming that Hone would get his seat and together they'd pull someone else in via the party vote/list.

Even though the Conservatives nearly got to the 5% threshold, they didn't have any support in the electorates, not even their leader. If National had agreed not to run Murray in ECB and Colin had managed to win that (I'm still not convinced he would have) then they would've ended up with 5 MPs! That's just the way MMP works under the current thresholds.

Geektastic

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#1134686 23-Sep-2014 16:21

I suppose you could argue that people below a certain age have no interest in voting (as they have demonstrated) so perhaps there is a case for raising the voting age to 21 again, rather than trying to find a way to make them do something they do not want to do.

If they have a little extra time to develop maturity, get into the workforce, discover more how government policies affect their lives etc then that may increase the number of voters.

dcole13

534 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#1134690 23-Sep-2014 16:28

Online voting and probs lowering the age will get more people to vote

Home ADSL: School:

nathan

5695 posts

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#1134693 23-Sep-2014 16:30

With compulsory.voting you can quite easily cast a nothing vote just by spoiling your paper.

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hashbrown

463 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#1134737 23-Sep-2014 17:26

I propose a 1for1 exchange program with North Korea.

We'll give them everyone who thinks democracy is a bit too hard to be bothered with. In return we'll take all the pesky people in camps who wanted a say in their government.

Everybody wins!

Batman

Mad Scientist
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#1134751 23-Sep-2014 17:47

how do we get more people to work/study?

ubergeeknz

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Vocus

#1134761 23-Sep-2014 17:57

dcole13: Online voting and probs lowering the age will get more people to vote

Aside from the obvious issues of allowing non-adults to vote, when you consider that turnout increases with age, that proposal does not make sense.

Coil

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#1134762 23-Sep-2014 18:01

If they dont vote say their votes count towards Hone Harawira.

Pretty sure there will be a 100% vote count.

Sideface

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#1134872 23-Sep-2014 19:33

nathan: With compulsory.voting you can quite easily cast a nothing vote just by spoiling your paper.

As an Australian now living in NZ, I have several decades of experience with compulsory voting in Oz.
Australian voting papers are very complicated and the voter is required to number ALL of the candidates on one or more voting papers in order of preference.
There may be 50 or more candidates, listed in alphabetical order.
This can result in a "donkey vote" by disinterested voters - just number the first candidate "1" and continue down the list.
One famous candidate for the Communist Party was called Adam Aarons, and his name improved his party vote considerably.
Even a motivated Oz voter can easily accidentally spoil his/her voting paper.

Keep it simple (like NZ).
The new option in NZ for (unrestricted) early voting is excellent.

Sideface

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mudguard

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#1134895 23-Sep-2014 19:58

I would like to have seen the election coverage including the non votes , IE a pie chart that gradually filled. That would really hammer home the percentage of non voters.
Having said that, when I checked online to see if I was enrolled, it was to quite an old address that I use for mail. So it took several attempts attempts to get the right address and confirm my new details. There was something else odd involving RealMe as well. I've already used RealMe but not verified my address, the elections website basically suggests using RealMe, then directs one to the nzpost website to register your address. It was a PDA.
as for encouraging people to vote, it has to go online, have a no confidence option, and those who don't can enjoy a10% addition to their income tax for three years!

ant2732

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1134935 23-Sep-2014 21:03

Make the act of voting an event, different polling booths different events. Make it something that people want to attend, a fun place to be.
a music event, a sporting even, a flower show, for example. Allow people to engage beyond just voting to but to celebrate.

oxnsox

1923 posts

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#1135019 23-Sep-2014 21:52

I'm not a fan of online voting.

The right to vote carries some responsibility, it's a right that has a lot of history, through war and peace, associated with it. Perhaps in this country that's not well understood, or respected.... probably because we have no shared boarders and are rather remote.

Taking the time to vote makes it a considered vote, or it should. Doing this on line leads to doing it at the supermarket checkout/coffee shop/ or when you use your snapper card. In short you'd vote when you're more focused on buying your big mac than on the responsibilty that should surround your voting decision.

Getting more people to do it would require things to get really bad; this would incentivise people to vote (and appreciate it), or threaten something that impacts them more directly (in the short term).
Historically people seem to vote for either change or for leadership.
And yes MMP could do with some tweeks, but there is no perfect system. However it has taken us a few more elections than folk thought before we're starting to fully understand how parties and individuals can manipulate it.

Geektastic

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#1135027 23-Sep-2014 22:02

ant2732: Make the act of voting an event, different polling booths different events. Make it something that people want to attend, a fun place to be.
a music event, a sporting even, a flower show, for example. Allow people to engage beyond just voting to but to celebrate.

"Did you vote?"

"No"

"Why not?"

"They had Dave Dobbyn playing live at the polling station."

"Ah, I understand."

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