Election turnout
Declining voter turnout is a worldwide trend that can only be turned around by young people
Direct-democracy threat to free fair and frequent elections
Four depravedly indifferent years of failed-fake-reality-show-host-led democracy in the United States is but the most recent demonstration of the race to the bottom that is populist politics. The line, however, between depraved populism and unprincipled party politics…
Compulsory voting cart before smarter-democracy horse
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 abstain from voting. But with global voter turnout in determined decline, New Zealand’s lack…
Climate and democracy at the mercy of plutocracy
Epically ironically, salvaging a survivable climate and a free society possibly now depends upon a one plutocrat deposing another plutocrat, turned dictator. Far preferably, Republican Party senators would suspend self-interest for the survival and dignity of their once…
You say you want a constitution and less democracy
What’s good for doctors of medicine, it would appear, doesn’t apply to doctors of law. The imperative to first do no harm is being violated in the latest proposal by Dr Andrew Butler and Sir Geoffrey Palmer qc, for a codified constitution for Aotearoa. In their second book together…
Just when Jacinda needed Germany most
When Jacinda Ardern stepped up, Labour was on 24% and National was at 47%. Once the special votes are counted, which include whatever youthquake or youth-tremor has occurred, the New Zealand National Party share will be lucky to be 45%…
Jacindaquake and Kids Voting curtain-raiser
There’s no reason to imagine Aotearoa will be spared its youthquake. In the United Kingdom, it was a 68-year-old Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who triggered the tremor. The quake unleashed by the youth-adjacent Jacinda Ardern, who has just rocked…
Four-year term terminal for turnout long-term
The need for Aotearoa to have a codified constitution is self-evident. Despite that, the initiative of constitutional lawyer Dr Andrew Butler and former prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer, launched in August, has failed to fire up a nation-wide discussion in the mainstream…
If it’s democracy that’s broke, fix it
From Day One he’s wanted a better slogan than ‘the World’s most liveable city.’ For his trouble, and even before hearing what that slogan might be, Mayor Phil Goff is being rubbished and ridiculed for wanting to replace the city’s tragically generic branding, with…
Kids Voting curtain-raiser could electrify elections
Voting in schools works, or would, if more students were involved. With participation rates so low, the only intervention proven to address the worldwide decline in voter turnout is being relegated to little more than tokenism. Of the nearly 500…
Hear no evidence see no evidence speak no…
It is difficult to say which is more egregious. The three mayors yearning for the good old days of single-day polling. Or the mainstream media for being equally ill-informed and not pillorying them for their collective abject lack of evidence-based policy…
Heart-shaped ballot boxes and Kombi combo fails to fire
Tessa Berger is quoted, but not by name. In his New Zealand Herald column Political Roundup, Dr Bryce Edwards names neither Tessa, nor the national Kids Voting programme she champions. Dr Edwards suggests local government is headed towards an…
Health boards and the triennial panning of STV
Every local-body election since its introduction, sees the same disinformation. The rock-solid single-transferable-vote system, first computerised in Aotearoa and used by her for 12 years, is set to endure its triennial onslaught of…
Only council candidate to score straight-a pluses
Warkworth from 4000 to 20 000 by 2040. That would be a five-fold increase in less than half the 50 years it took the region to treble to today’s population, of about 1.5 million. With this planned growth-rate of more than three times the regional average…
Polling patch-up for flawed first-past-the-post
Polling gets blamed for a lot of things. For starters, for influencing folk into voting for the winning side. Or, conversely, for influencing folk into voting for the underdog. Whereas, in an ideal world, voters would express their honestly held preference…
Bugger evidence-based policymaking – buy a Kombi
After three decades of Kids Voting, there is ample evidence to back it up. And for half that time, after it was imported from the United States by the then Auckland City Council, kids in Aotearoa have been at it. This year, a record 11 730 students in the…
Exactly two weeks to enrol those elusive 18–29-year-olds
In 2013, Len Brown was elected by a mere 16.5% of Aucklanders registered to vote. This was the result of an abysmal 35% turnout, and marginal popularity combined with the inevitable consequences of first-past-the-post. Dazed and disillusioned…
Web Magna Carta and better democracy for half the price
It is possible to put a price on better democracy. At least to the extent that combining local and general elections would nearly halve the cost of holding them, and massively improve local-body turnout to boot. Extensive experience elsewhere suggests that…
mmp permits youth to be given lifetime licence to vote
Before 1996, it mattered—in order to participate in an election, a person needed to be registered in an electorate. This requirement reflected the Westminster system whereby the extent of a voter’s democratic entitlement was, at best, to help…
Concurrent elections closest to voter-turnout silver bullet
Another local body election, and another uninformed swipe at STV. While it is probable that the at-large, single-transferable-vote, district health board elections are the single biggest reason only a third of Aucklanders returned their ballots…
Mahurangi Magazine reprints the New Lynn speech
You know that at the last election, the one that we lost so badly, nearly one million people didn’t vote; more than 800 000 people—a fifth of the population—didn’t vote. Now you know, there are lots of reasons that people didn’t vote, and there were…