electoral systems

MMP

Polity: Internet Party: “Ban coat-tailing.”

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 26 comments

New Zealand’s democracy would better if we had a lower threshold and no coat-tailing shenanigans. Even without coat-tailing there remains the potential for blocs to make tiny gains by way of electorate deals, but it would ensure the end of manifest unfairnesses like the relative ACT / NZ First results in 2008. The reality is that National had the opportunity to do the right thing, and  chose not to for venal self-interested reasons, and are now crying like spoiled brats because their opponents are using it too.

Polity: Even non-coattail electorate deals can create unfair advantage

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 21 comments

What of the deals with true minnow parties, like United Future or ACT? If a party is only polling enough to get one seat anyway, does it matter to Parliament overall whether the small party wins an electorate or its client big party wins it instead? The answer is “possibly, yes,” because we can never be sure which party ultimately loses a seat to accommodate the new minnow party in a 120 seat parliament. Say a Epsom deal as a test case

Pagani should read up on Labour policy

Written By: redfed
Date published: - 101 comments

On Q&A this morning Josie Pagani criticised Labour for not trying to get the MMP coat tail rule removed. The only  problem is that Labour already has a bill ready to do just this. Before criticising the Party for inaction she should learn what the party is actually doing.

Polity: Boundary changes

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 20 comments

Rob Salmond’s take on the boundary changes announced last week. In a MMP election system the actual electoral boundaries usually only really matter to a few MPs. It isn’t likely to make much of a difference unless National manages to have a cup of tea with a party with enough electoral muscle to get more than a single MP into the house and an electorate’s voters think this matters. After the John Banks/Act debacle who’d be moronic enough to think that electorate seats in a list do matter? Apart from our silly first-past-the-post stand-in-man for David Farrar of course…

NRT: Unsurprising

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 17 comments

But on any realistic numbers, its unthinkable for a future Labour government not to include the Greens, and as Gordon Campbell points out, by refusing to define their relationship themselves, Labour has given National a free hand to do it for them – and in undoubtedly negative terms. That won’t do the Greens any harm. But its unlikely to be good for Labour.

Polity: The Greens’ proposed pre-election deal

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 58 comments

Last night, via One News, the public became aware that the Greens had proposed a pre-election coalition with Labour, but Labour had rejected it. While the Greens’ offer is nothing unusual internationally, New Zealand’s comparatively fair electoral system doesn’t provide Labour much incentive to accept it. Which, I think, makes Labour’s rejection of the proposal much less noteworthy.

Tim Watkin is wrong

Written By: Ben Clark
Date published: - 21 comments

Tim Watkin recently had a post over at Pundit, saying about why a 15% gap between Labour and National matters. His crux point is that in no MMP election has a party led by 15% and not formed the government. Unfortunately for Tim, this is demonstrably wrong.

Polity: Data on moral mandates in Europe

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 3 comments

Rob Salmond continues looking at the absolute silliness of the argument about the largest party having a “moral mandate” to form a government. It appears to be a self-serving wet dream made up by fossils who still haven’t grasped that we are nearly in our second decade of MMP.  All our governments have been coalitions where the largest parties have usually received a mandate of less that a third of those on the roll. But look at the long-standing proportional governments of Europe for examples…

Key’s transparent gerrymander

Written By: Mike Smith
Date published: - 101 comments

For John Key, MMP stands for “Manipulate Members of Parliament”. Senior journalists are beginning to call him on the games he’s playing, and good on them; gerrymander entered the New Zealand political lexicon at Key’s press conference this week. Key wants to push the issues away till closer to the election, when he’ll know what his polling is telling him – I hope the gallery don’t let him.

Coat-tail of Many Colours

Written By: Guest post
Date published: - 72 comments

Te Reo Putake speculates on exactly what plan that National and John Key have to distort the MMP review and Iain Lee Galloway’s private members bill so that it allows them to stay in power. Most probably by gifting Crazy Colin and the Conservatives with several chances to get several partners into parliament while discarding the husks of their former coalition partners.

Key loses his “Centre”, Herald spins right, Smith on the ropes

Written By: karol
Date published: - 35 comments

Cunliffe’s moderate, centre left Labour is on the rise; MSM-supported, NAct smears & negative spin is in over-drive.  John Key and the NZ Herald editorial  spin from the radical “neoliberal” right.  Slippery Nick Smith, a NAct weak point, is under concerted pressure. [Updated]

Moral mandates

Written By: Anthony R0bins
Date published: - 115 comments

Key is clearly getting nervous about the implosion of his possible electoral partners in 2014. He’s running the “largest party has a moral mandate to govern line” again. It’s destabilising, and it’s rubbish, here’s why…

Labour on MMP “consultation”

Written By: Anthony R0bins
Date published: - 29 comments

According to Labour: “Judith Collins has claimed that she ‘consulted’ with political parties but was unable to reach consensus. There was absolutely no consultation.”

Random thoughts on MMP

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 36 comments

Colin James has expressed my response to Judith Collin’s politicialising of the MMP review. “Elections do not belong to MPs. Elections belong to the people. MPs should be very wary of appropriating what belongs to others.”.  Self-interested bleating by Act and United Future doesn’t mean that National should go off and do another short-term hack of the good proposals as they did in after 1993. The recommendations are clear and an accurate reflection of public mood. Just implement them as they are.

MMP: we need follow through

Written By: Ben Clark
Date published: - 20 comments

The Electoral Commission’s report is out. Now we need to make sure that the Government follow-thru on what an independent board have decided having listened to ordinary New Zealanders’ submissions.

Frankly Speaking: “John Banks: condition deteriorating”

Written By: Guest post
Date published: - 18 comments

Frank Macskasy over at Frankly Speaking writes some very long posts that are often full of interesting information. This one does a good analysis of the recommendations from the Electoral Commission and various party positions on it. On the way through he has a good swipe at John Banks, who it would be safe to say, he considers to be political cabbage.

Quick thoughts on MMP changes

Written By: Eddie
Date published: - 19 comments

Lowering the threshold to 4% is a step in the right direction but why not go further? Getting rid of coattailing is negative in theory but in practice could stop anti-democratic gaming by major parties protecting tiny client parties. Abolishing overhangs is bad – it just increases disproportionality for parties with strong electorate support vs party support – ie the Maori Party.

MMP review

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 87 comments

The first proposal paper from the Electoral Commission on the MMP review is due out soon.

Updated with the early coverage.

MMP Review: Last Day

Written By: Ben Clark
Date published: - 1 comment

Today is the last day for submissions to the MMP Review.

If you haven’t done so yet, make sure your have your say – it only takes 5 minutes for the short submission.

Another MMP rort?

Written By: Mike Smith
Date published: - 44 comments

The media are doing a good job investigating John Banks’ donation history.  The Police are presumably also doing theirs, and it seems clear that the matter must end up in Court and the issue of who is telling the truth will be decided by a judge. Some in the media have dismissed the question of any threat to National’s majority. Short-term maybe, long-term I’m not so sure.

Labour moving to the right?

Written By: Anthony R0bins
Date published: - 153 comments

Many commentators have interpreted David Shearer’s recent speech as signaling a “move to the right”. I think it’s too early to tell. But if it’s true, I think it’s good news for lefties…

Quick MMP review thoughts

Written By: Zetetic
Date published: - 18 comments

Lower the threshold and reduce wasted vote; leave it at 2-3% to make it less likely multiple one-man bands hold balance of power. Stop winning an electorate being a route to getting list seats; eliminate most dirty deals. Let List MPs run in by-elections and people stand both in seats and on lists; banning these would result in undesirable tactics from parties.

Participate: MMP Review

Written By: Ben Clark
Date published: - 18 comments

You may have noticed the ads about The Standard for the MMP Review that the Electoral Commission announced yesterday.

Now’s your chance to have your say on what MMP will look like in the future.

NRT: In defence of dual candidacy

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 22 comments

Some people reckon that if you run as an electorate candidate and lose you shouldn’t be allowed to go in as a list MP. You’re ‘not wanted’. But that doesn’t make sense. Some electorate MPs won with 6,000-8,000 votes, while 19 list MPs won more votes than that in losing an electorate race. Besides, not all constituencies are geographic. NRT elaborates:

Carmel wins, Nats down 1, MMP to stay

Written By: Mike Smith
Date published: - 196 comments

Official Election results are out. Carmel Sepuloni takes Waitakere back for Labour by 11 votes, and National loses one seat to the Greens. MMP wins by a mile. Well done Carmel – I’m really glad she stays in Parliament. I don’t think a recount will change anything – I scrutineered the official count last election and the people doing it were very very careful.

Vote for MMP, anything else is just crazy

Written By: lprent
Date published: - 40 comments

I see that the Nats in drag anti-MMP campaign have brought space on our banner. Now I know the mood of the authors on this subject.  They’d like MMP with tweaks – which will happen in 2014.

I looked at the anti’s pathetic ad, and decided that it was more effective to take their money, counter it (like the Standards enhanced logo?) and comment on it.

Keep calm and vote MMP

Written By: notices and features
Date published: - 17 comments

Campaign for MMP has recently started selling T-shirts as part of their campaign fundraising.

Their “Keep Calm and Vote MMP” T-shirts are a very reasonably priced $40 and come in a stylish black.