My view is that the Act only gives the High Court to make orders in relation to the one seat in Parliament about…

However, the Electoral Commission said the court would also be guided by the need to observe real justice.

"The question would be whether the court was prepared to make additional orders relating to the allocation of…

Will hopefully do that in the next couple of days, but in short, it's a combination of sections 55, 229(3) and 243, and a fair bit comes down…

Unless it comes down to one vote, it doesn’t matter. Bennett can get kicked out of Parliament for committing a corrupt practice. She can’t get kicked out because someone else might be found to have…

Extrapolating results from fish groups to human voters does not strike me as scientifically viable...

Headline: " Uninformed 'vital for democracy' "

Something fishy...

And sometimes there's no need to roll the die at all. To lose your favorite Minister could be considered a misfortune. To give the balance of power to the Maori Party looks like carelessness. She'd have…

Before that I'd suggest that you do a very careful analysis of the law.

Special declaration votes where the person is not enrolled anywhere do not even have the ballot paper taken out of the sealed compartment. See
s41 of the Electoral Regulations.…

Not so nice reading this...

Auckland lawyer Peter Kiely was recount scrutineer for the National Party
and said some changes came about because votes allowed on election night might have had a mark in the box rather than…

JDO has never been that quick. Least of all for a decision apparently released on a weekend.

Compared to the returning officer's 'final' count, the judge gave Paula 8 more votes, and Carmel 12 fewer. 9 more for the Green candidate and negligible changes for other candidates and for party votes. 8 fewer informal candidate votes. 2…

BENNETT, Paula NAT 1,155
BRADFORD, Sue MANA 56
LYE, Jeff ALCP 59
MOUNTAIN, Danny CNSP 59
OSBORNE, Peter LIB 7
SEPULONI, Carmel LAB 1,495
TOLLESTRUP, Steve GP 273
Candidate…

Announced sometime yesterday. Sadly Judicial Decisions Online seems to no longer provide what it should. The judge has released a decision which I would be interested to see.

Exactly the point I remember Graeme alluding to,…

No – just no. I know there are a lot of…

Before I am Edglered, I should make it clear that changes can happen for other reasons: eg in the recount, a decision can be made whether a special vote is allowed or not due to the signature of a witness on…

Do feel very welcome to report any observations here.

No, but it is rather important this time around, especially considering the chance of Graeme's "Paula's Peril" scenario. If that eventuated, then the whole National party could end up cursing her…

You’re taking the piss, right? But hey, if you want to accuse District…

But this is clue dough!
and as we all know
senselessness = e!

These days, it's having no dollar = poverty

Pennilessness is the state of having no money.

With apologies to Jonathan Swift...

Hmmm, Forrest Gump moment.
;-)

Handsome is as handsome does.

Not only that but there is something not quite right about a round number, exactly 20 votes found lying around somewhere all with Bennett's name on them? or exactly 20 votes discounted for Sepuloni . Fishy eh?
If you are going…

As they say in Libya...
"May your body hair be infested by the fleas of a thousand camels"
or so I've heard. Wonderful people.
;-)

This had to happen for my scenario to come true. Now for the next step.

classy

A vagrant is sitting on a roadside park bench in West Auckland, when out of nowhere, Paula Bennett’s leopard-skinned ministerial limo zooms past. Several minutes later, two stocky men struggle and heave to haul a very obviously stolen money safe. Still another several minutes later, the cops show…

My daughter can do "Now I only want you gone" from the Portal 2 game on ukulele, but we are at the other end of the…

Yes it is.

The reason why 47.31% of the vote => 59 seats is that:

3.37% of the votes…

Conservatives and ALCP in with 3 & 1 respectively.

e: actually ALCP may not get in depending on whether you need 1/120 to get in and what remainder method method you use. In that case, the Greens do not lose a seat.

Turns out I did. Only it was in the other thread!

I thought you must have too, but you didn't. It does make sense, though. Counting isn't exactly rocket science.

I thought I already said, but ... because the returning officer will have been really really careful the first time around.

Why not?

I think rather unlikely, but mostly because I don’t think the judicial recount will go Bennett's way. If it doesn’t, and she still tries…

As with a by-election, there might be a window in which Bennett could resign as a list MP before being formally elected as the local member.

This is my favourite alternative – the threshold should be exactly that required to earn a seat.

Plus Bennett lining up for the dole. The poetic justice.

It's pretty variable.

Germany's MMP system has 5% or three electorates (but ~600 members of their lower…

I for one welcome our new ALCP coalition-building overlords (that's right, meme'ing like it's y2k biznitches)

I assumed not, I've just complained here before about how the 2008 election is mis-remembered. A lot :-)

yes, that would be good. getting rid of the "one-electorate-seat exemption" and halving the 5% threshold to 2.5% is the way to make things fairer and encourage more people to vote, imho.

Also, I'd forgotten Peters had lost Tauranga in 2005.

Graeme, can you also ask them to review the anamoly we saw in the 2008 election where:

– ACT got a measly 2% of the vote, yet thanks to Hide…