by Cimino | 28 Oct 2019 | STV, Term of office
Big business would be the biggest loser, was a Labour-led government to legislate to prosecute non-voters. Currently, unlike Australians, New Zealanders are legally allowed to refrain from voting. But with global voter turnout in determined decline, New Zealand’s lack...
by Cimino | 18 Oct 2019 | Heritage vessels, Part 3 Pioneer Pākehā
Buffalo off spar station misses festival but makes history Pictorially, at least, hmss Buffalo off Gordon Davis Browne’s spar station will make a fashionably late arrival to Auckland Heritage Festival 2019, which concludes at the end of Labour Weekend. Given that...
by Cimino | 11 Oct 2019 | Local, STV
Vote early and often to elect the first mayor of Mahurangi—of course, only the latest vote an individual casts will count. Because somebody votes early, they shouldn’t later be penalised when some late-breaking information causes them to revise their preferences: Vote...
by Cimino | 10 Oct 2019 | Climate mobilisation, Local, Youth voting
It’s long since time to jettison the obligatory if-we-don’t-act-on-climate-within-so-many-years exhortation. Truth is that, since 1988, when not only Dr James Hansen but Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher“we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of...
by Cimino | 24 Sep 2019 | Local, STV
Friend of the Mahurangi J Barry Ferguson has long argued the need for a local mayor. Mayors, to be legitimate, need to be elected by preference voting—known as stvsingle-transferable-vote in Aotearoa, and known as rcvranked-choice-voting in the United States, where...
by Cimino | 21 Sep 2019 | Local, STV
Some dots can take longer to connect. And the more obvious the dot, the longer it seems to take for it to be connected. Since the announcement of the terms of reference of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, the Mahurangi Magazine has been exploring ways that...
by Cimino | 3 Sep 2019 | Local, STV, Youth voting
Ideally, the bicentennial of stvsingle-transferable-vote should be held where the Birmingham Society for Literary and Scientific Improvement held the world’s first election with it. But even if that ultimate location—were it known, and were it still standing—was the...
by Cimino | 17 Aug 2019 | Local, STV, Youth voting
First-past-the-post, 200 years after the first single transferable vote election, deserves to be a very distant memory. But, thanks to the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance stvsingle-transferable-vote-ignoramuses, the region is about to elect its fourth mayor...
by Cimino | 9 Aug 2019 | Buffalo, Heritage vessels, Mahurangi history
Bay where no ships has been 60 years with no name It was almost certainly a good thing, that 60 years ago the name of the Auckland region’s first European settlement slid unnoticed into the next bay north. Had the bay been known by a descriptive name, such as Spar...
