Youth voting
Youth voting—the only evidence-based route to reversing declining turnout
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…
Holy grails and silver bullets and day-and-half to vote
It’s long since time to jettison the obligatory if-we-don’t-act-on-climate-within-so-many-years exhortation. The truth is that, since 1988, when not only Dr James Hansen but Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called for climate action, it has never been certain…
stv bicentennial extraordinary town-hall talk
Ideally, the bicentennial of stv 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 was the epicentre of a global celebration, two other, antipodean, countries…
Crude reminder of royally half-cocked commission
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 with the…
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…
Let’s do this, and deliver unperverted democracy
It would be hard to contrive a more effective means of turning youth off. After being lectured for months on the importance of enrolling and voting, young people are now told nothing. Not only are they not told how young people voted, they are not even told…
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%…
Mahu youth has National munted
If the local Kids Voting result is any indication, New Zealand’s youthquake is going to visit most damage on National. Mahurangi College students, their Kids Voting coordinator has reported, gave the Labour Party a clear majority: 35% versus the National…
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…
No Dunne deal – directly elect coalitions
As with the America’s Cup, coming second place in party politics generally equates with losing. Until recently, it had been looking as though the hospital pass Bill English received from the charismatic, if unchivalrous, Sir John Key might not prove fatal…
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…
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…
Berger tops list thanks to National ideology
Tessa Berger’s bonanza of national media coverage began locally. It began with the Rodney Times sending out its excellent reporter Jay Boreham to interview Tessa in respect to her eye-catching billboards, one of which by then had been removed…
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…
First-past-the-post dictates one tick
Voters, reasonably, seek to get their money’s worth. But thanks to obdurate royal commissioners, Auckland Council remains stuck in the bad old days of first-past-the-post, and voters are about to be short-changed. This is manifestly evident in the crowded, 18-strong…
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…
Best understood by least represented
Cohort that best understands the enormity of anthropogenic global warming is that which is least represented in Parliament. It is also the age-group that is least enrolled, and votes least. But given the great gulf between the awful reality of global warming…
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…