Electoral Review 2023 - no wasted votes

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Eitsop

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#304033 30-Mar-2023 15:28

The electoral review published summary of submissions.. https://electoralreview.govt.nz/assets/PDF/IER-Summary-of-Submissions-Stage-1-Engagement.pdf

The one I hope that gets adopted, since most people are loath in reducing threshold.. is to put in a preferential vote just for the party threshold. as many people alter their votes rather than voting for small parties, so not to risk wasting their vote.

"A few submitters suggested that the party vote threshold would be less important if
preferential voting were used for the party vote. These submitters considered that
preferential voting, by allowing voters to nominate a second choice for their party vote if
their first preference did not meet the threshold, would ensure that there were fewer
wasted votes than under the status quo."

neb

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#3056616 30-Mar-2023 16:01

How different is that from STV? Experience has shown that many (most?) voters have a great deal of difficulty getting to grips with that.

Rikkitic

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#3056626 30-Mar-2023 16:17

neb: How different is that from STV? Experience has shown that many (most?) voters have a great deal of difficulty getting to grips with that.

That can easily be solved with education.

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neb

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#3056627 30-Mar-2023 16:19

Rikkitic:
That can easily be solved with education.

As can the problem of people falling for phishing email, bad driving, ...

In other words, as a friend of mine once put it, "if user education was going to work, it would have worked by now".

Rikkitic

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#3056632 30-Mar-2023 16:39

neb:
Rikkitic:

That can easily be solved with education.

As can the problem of people falling for phishing email, bad driving, ... In other words, as a friend of mine once put it, "if user education was going to work, it would have worked by now".

The difference here is that STV can be easily understood if it is explained well, and it can be easily explained well.

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GV27

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#3057426 1-Apr-2023 12:43

I'd prefer we went all in on STV and ditched party lists altogether. Multiple MPs for each electorate. Would also nuke gamesmanship like Epsom once and for all.

Eitsop

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#3057448 1-Apr-2023 14:00

I will like MMP, as no one party has all answers.. and we are still dominated by either National or Labour

Just some of the smart small parties like The Opportunities Party doesn't get in.. as 5 % is big threshold

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#3057450 1-Apr-2023 14:04

Eitsop:
Just some of the smart small parties like The Opportunities Party doesn't get in.. as 5 % is big threshold

Given the unfortunate importing of some of the US's far-right crackpottery I think it's a good thing that there's a 5% cutoff. Would you want Freedoms New Zealand or Action Zealandia getting into parliament? Building a lint filter into the political system is more usually a good idea rather than a bad one.

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#3057451 1-Apr-2023 14:14

What I would like to see is a non-adversarial political system where people don't have to queue up behind their ideological differences and oppose each other for the sake of it. This is a small country with a limited talent pool. There are good and hopeless people on both sides. Let's take the good ones and have them work together.

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ezbee

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#3057596 1-Apr-2023 16:16

Rikkitic, I can see you are an idealist. Bless you for your optimism.

Even in Denmark and Nordics the shining example of Social Democracy, politics has its rough and tumble.
So I expect we may have to put up with a bit of mud slinging for a while.

Its not like we have MPs engaging in fist fights during debates, like some others.

Then you have the French and their behavior, violence with burning rubbish and e-scooters for pushing retirement age out ' 2 years '.
All these young louts really so radicalized by idea of waiting 2 years longer in 30-40 years time?
Or waiting a couple more years for ballot box to decide?
Then there was burning a trucks with NZ lamb by their farmers a few years back.

At least we are far from that, though the thing that happened in front of Parliament bought us closer.

An army of conspiracy, hate filled, malcontents is very profitable as Murdock might say.
Auckland Radio thrives on this, and being in a freq band that Japanese Imports support.

We will be lucky enough if we avoid violence happening again, save it for a few harsh words.

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#3058168 3-Apr-2023 12:35

Eitsop:

The one I hope that gets adopted, since most people are loath in reducing threshold..

I don't know if that is correct. The only people I have really seen against reducing the threshold are politicians in Labour or National. Most people seem to be fine with it. Sure it may mean some of the 1-2% crazy parties get a seat, but removing the spectre of wasted votes is worth it.

GV27

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#3058435 3-Apr-2023 14:19

Varkk:

I don't know if that is correct. The only people I have really seen against reducing the threshold are politicians in Labour or National. Most people seem to be fine with it. Sure it may mean some of the 1-2% crazy parties get a seat, but removing the spectre of wasted votes is worth it.

Generally I only see people arguing for it if it means a potential new coalition partner to head off an opposition you don't like - e.g. TOP or whatever idiots National talks about from time to time ('Family' parties, religious nutcases, NZ First).

Why is a vote for a party that doesn't hit 5% a 'waste'? There's a huge amount of stability gained by electoral contests not trying to whip up racists or insane zealots to hit 0.83% (effectively one seat).

No electoral system would be perfect but concentrating huge power in the hands of fringe lunatics who can't convince 5% of the people who actually vote that they're worth voting for is a recipe for disaster.

Of course the superior system is the STV system that allows you to get rid of the party vote altogether and would rid us of lists at the same time.

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neb

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#3058549 3-Apr-2023 17:22

ezbee:
Then you have the French and their behavior, violence with burning rubbish and e-scooters for pushing retirement age out ' 2 years '.
All these young louts really so radicalized by idea of waiting 2 years longer in 30-40 years time?

No, they're just engaging in the French national pastime. This is how French politics works, the government announces an unpopular policy, or maybe even a vaguely popular policy, or there's a rumour that an unpopular policy might be upcoming [*], or even just there hasn't been a big protest for awhile, so there are protests and things get burned and French farmers drive to Paris in their tractors and dump manure somewhere noticeable and everyone who isn't taking part in the fun goes on with life as normal. After a week or so the protests fizzle out and everyone waits for the next excuse to protest.

There's a great video floating around somewhere of people in a restaurant calmly eating dinner with a wall of flames in the street behind them which they're completely ignoring. That's how it works there.

[*] Seriously. One time I was there there was a national train strike because the strikers wanted to reassure the government that if they decided to start talking about some wage change - which they hadn't - then there'd be strikes. Some trains still ran right through the strike because you don't want to piss people off too much and everyone got on those, no fares were collected and provided you didn't mind waiting a bit you could still get from A to B. There's a special French term for this, "le systeme D".