Christopher Luxon is sticking to his lines that the proposed changes to the Electoral Law will speed up the result even though this will disenfranchise an estimated 55,000 kiwis and even though the Chief Electoral Officer has said that if properly resourced the changes will make no difference.
US voter suppression tactics are back in vogue and National’s Coalition is bringing them to Aotearoa New Zealand
Misleading the public never is good for politics.
The Representation Commission’s draft boundaries for the next election have been released. And despite right wing claims to the contrary at least in Auckland the boundaries appear to favour the left.
The North Island needs to lose an electorate seat. It appears that Epsom is the most logical seat to go.
With all of the issues about Green party MPs, who have been having issues recently, I was intrigued to run across the article in the Guardian “Reform UK under pressure to prove all its candidates were real people” after the recent election in the UK.
The Electoral Commission has released the major promoters’ electoral returns. These show significant amounts of money being spent on getting Labour unelected but give no detail about how the campaigns were funded.
The Electoral Commission has published that National raised $2.3 million dollars in large donations alone over the past 12 months.
The Electoral laws about donations are pretty clear. Receive a donation over $30,000 and you should tell the Electoral Commission about the report within the next ten working days. But the Maori Party and the National Party have both managed to recently breach this simple requirement.
Nick Smith has publicly opposed a change to the electoral system that would allow strategic manipulation of the electoral system. But only by Māori.
Stuff has an article up about last years local body elections in Auckland. As usual the interesting parts are at the end. But I have to reiterate – online voting isn’t the answer. As a programmer, I’d just call it stupid and dangerous.
National’s recent donations returns suggest that a large total of their donations are made in the under $15,000 category, the benefit of which is that the donor’s identity does not have to be disclosed. Update: The four accused have been named.
It’s clear that Parliament is incapable of meaningful reforms to itself, as some political parties have a vested interest in the status quo, a citizens’ assembly would remove bias around these important decisions.
– NZ Green Party
The SFO charges laid in the District Court reveal that it investigated not one but two dodgy $100,000 donations to National.
What beats MMP? Open-list proportional representation with a low threshold would be a good option.
Two recent National advertisements involving drastically inaccurate graphics have attracted attention. And at the same time National is opposing changes to the Electoral Law that would extend the time that it is an offence to publish a false and misleading advertisement during an election period.
I’ve always liked Punch magazine’s famous cartoon “True humility” where the curate assures his bishop noticing his bad egg that parts of it are excellent. Most discussion on Little’s Bill has focused on the bad bits regarding foreign donations. The good bit requires all political ads online to be attributed.
Simon Bridges’ demand of an investigation into the New Zealand First Foundation appears to have backfired after it emerges that the NZ First Foundation was modelled on the National Party Foundation.
Simon Bridges has accused NZ First of engaging in the most significant breach of electoral law in New Zealand’s history. But has not ruled out working with NZ First in the future. And has forgotten about National’s neat partition of a $100,000 donation to hide it from the authorities.
There has been recent media exposure on New Zealand First’s treatment of donations and the use of a trust to receive donations and avoid contribution disclosure requirements by making payments loans rather than gifts.
Nick Smith has complained that making it easier for people to vote by allowing them to enrol on election day will disadvantage the National Party.
Simon Bridges did the remarkable thing yesterday of distancing himself from his own party over events he had major involvement in.
The Jami-Lee Ross scandal may have quietened down but issues raised by his explosive tape recording of Simon Bridges still need addressing. Does the $100k Zhang Yikun donation suggest we are going down the US track and, if so, what needs to be done about that
Maybe not a smoking gun, Jami-Lee Ross’s tape recording of Simon Bridges sheds plenty of sunlight on the influence that money can buy within the National Party, casual racism endemic within National, the manipulation of ethnic communities and, most importantly, insights into the wielding of “soft power” by China.
The election year donation returns have been released and show a surge of donations for Labour but National still well ahead.
Last year’s electorate expense returns have now been made public.
The special vote count should be out at 2pm tomorrow. The mathematically plausible scenarios are either good, or very good, for the left.
The Opportunities Party’s election campaign Communications Director and recent appointee to the Broadcasting Standards Authority has had their election day tweets referred to the police.
Some post election thoughts on what James Shaw said last night, what the post-election options are, and that given the Left got a possible reprieve not an outright win, what are we going to do next?
Poll results! And, the most important thing we can do now is vote, and get out the vote, and remind people that only Labour and the Greens have committed to changing the government.
Another election and another set of problems with the Crown’s running of the electoral process for Māori.
Voting has opened for advance votes and the expectation is that it will be pretty heavy prior to polling day over the next couple of weeks. I’ll be out there voting today for Jacinda Arden as my local MP, and for the Greens as my party vote.
As a computer programmer and someone who has been involved in politics for decades, I’m always amazed at idiots like Malcolm Alexander of the LGNZ talking about something that they clearly don’t understand the technicalities of. Online voting is way too fragile to roll out. And anyway young voters are still going to not have their voting details at hand.
The electoral commission’s roll solution does two good things, and one regrettable thing. It would rule out misuse of the rolls for debt collection / product marketing purposes. Good – that isn’t what the electoral roll is for. It protects party/candidates access to electronic copies. But it continues to privilege them above other political advocates – bad!
I’m getting scattered reports and images of political advertising popping up on various websites. They seem to look like accidents more than a deliberate strategy.
Updated: In other news blogger does a good selfie…
Updated 1300: NZ Herald mobile site still has political ads popping up periodically.
Updated 1550: Quinovic Mt Eden have clearly violated electoral law with a mailout.
At 12pm tonight, the comments section on this site will (largely) stop accepting comments. I will (probably) be putting up a post tomorrow morning to accept, store and act on private electoral complaints from anywhere around the country. Take a snap of violations and log it. Lets keep the buggers honest. Updated.
