Voting Local 2010
499 Responses
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Changes were made during the public consultation process - which was always going to happen. I can't see how any of that was anti-democratic.
How about the govt's repeal in one of the supercity enabling acts of the part of the Local Government Act that required a referendum of voters before any amalgamation? Or removing voters' right to ask for STV as all other council elections have? Or exempting Watercare from certain official information requirements, which coincided nicely with timing of potential privatisation. Or the secret torpedoing of dedicated Maori seats while a sham consultation process proceeded.
Personally, I don't want to hear Penny Hulse saying "many of us didn't support the Super City" ever again because it's her bloody job to make it work.
Penny Hulse is speaking to strong community views (especially led from Waitakere) that the decisive election result now mandates certain humility and responsiveness from the government in light of its manifest bad faith during the establishment process like the examples I've mentioned.
It's a valid negotiating position and an expression of good faith to many of those who supported her campaign. However Hulse is a seasoned and very competent councillor and I doubt she expects an outbreak of three-bags-full from Hide, Joyce, Key et al.
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Yes, Russell, because that's how democracy works - not how it dies.
You know very well what I mean. Neil is insisting that anyone who protested the way the amalgamation was pursued -- and in particular the original bill -- is now somehow a hypocrite for participating.
Many Aucklanders did feel dictated to, they said in polls that they thought the process had been rushed. They were right. None of that makes them hypocrites. Even John Banks beat a hasty retreat from his original support for the bill (distancing himself from Wellington and declaring himself "outside the tent") once he realised the strength of public opinion.
I always thought the amalgamation was a good idea. I also thought most of the criticisms -- especially around the disgracefully undemocratic structure of the CCOs -- was valid. As I said in this morning's post, there are elements of this that are going to plague us for years.
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Neil is insisting that anyone who protested the way the amalgamation was pursued -- and in particular the original bill -- is now somehow a hypocrite for participating.
No, not anyone, Labour. It's their rhetoric I had a problem with. I thought they would have been better off with "Hide stole our idea" rather than "Hide fronts take-over by rich".
I take you point that quite a few Aucklanders felt dictated to but that would have happened under Labour as well. Both parties were convinced that amalgamation was in the best interest of Auckland and NZ as a whole and they were determined to make that happen and were not going to allow it to get bogged down in endless local govt bickering.
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You know very well what I mean.
Since I don't list troll-fishing among my recreations, assume I wasn't entirely clear on what you meant. Thanks for the clarification.
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Idiot/Savant questions the accountability of the *other* local bodies just elected - District Health Boards.
Legally, they are accountable to the Minister, not to us. If they advocate on behalf of their electors, they can be sacked. And their decision-making power is mostly an illusion. Both their strategic and annual plans must be signed off by the Minister. More importantly, their funding, and what it is spent on, is dictated by the Minister. A DHB has very little discretion on how their money is spent. Instead, they are effectively elected managers, all accountability with no responsibility.
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@Rich
Thanks for the extras - I particularly like the quote from Kiley.
Nevertheless, we will do everything within our power to hold the infrastructure companies to account on those Tube improvements they have promised to deliver.
Substitute water, other infrastructure etc. A litany perhaps ?
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we will do everything within our power
very important who gets to define what those powers are
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How about the govt's repeal in one of the supercity enabling acts of the part of the Local Government Act that required a referendum of voters before any amalgamation?
That didn't happen.
The requirement to hold a referendum under the Local Government Act has only ever applied to non-Parliamentary amalgamations - situations where two cities or districts were trying to join without getting permission from Parliament.
Basically: "if you want amalgamate, you have to get approval from the People, either directly, or through their representatives in Parliament".
Other large-scale amalgamations/reorgansiations have been done in the same way. The one in the late 80s (dropping from around 600 local authorities to approximately what there is now) didn't involve a single referendum.
Should they have had a referendum? Maybe.
Should the process have been better (select committee scrutiny, etc.)? Yes.
Did they breach/ignore/repeal part of the Local Government Act to avoid holding one? No.
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Thank you Graeme. That seems more credible than the advice I was relying on.
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anth,
It's nice that the people of Auckland voted ...
It'd be better if ...I'd say having a similar number of voters per councillor should be pretty high on the list of things that'd be nice to have.
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And it's Mayor Celia Wade-Brown for Wellington, by 176 votes.
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yesss! Hurrah for Celia. What great news. Party time.
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* Does Snoopy Happy Dance around the living room *
HOORAY for the Wellington special votes! Hooray for Celia! Hooray! Wellington just went a little bit greener!
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I've gotten a look the Dunedin results (no time for analysis yet). And let me say, I find it really weird that STV assigns 2 decimal places of votes in the recalculation process. For example in round 57 Stevenson Teresa had 2,526.16 Votes, and in round 58 had 2,522.02.
I'm assuming there is rounding going on somewhere in the process and that it is assigning votes based on percentages, but it sure isn't how I would have implemented the system (I would have thought an array (votes) of an array (candidate order) and deleting excluded candidates from the front of the candidate order array on each pass would be the way to go).
Anyway, while I am entirely comfortable with the theory of STV, the exact implementation leaves me baffled. -
David - in STV elections with multiple candidates elected there are fractions of the vote in the calculations. This is because not only are candidates excluded, but the excess votes of candidates who win are also redistributed.
Assume that 100 votes are needed to get someone elected. One candidate - Bob - gets 125 votes. 25 of those votes aren't needed to elect Bob, and can be used by other candidates, using the voters' preferences. So each of the voters for that person gives 0.8 of their vote to Bob, and 0.2 of their vote to their second preference, trying to help them get to that 100 vote mark to be one of the other candidates elected.
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Thanks Graeme, that explains it nicely.
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Hi David,
I've had (I think), a pretty reasonable hack at the Dunedin Central ward (original analysis), and more extended post. Looking forward to seeing the final count out tomorrow, although I don't expect anything much will change.
Also, on the redistribution of surplus votes from successful candidates, I think its pretty clear on the graph. -
My first stap at a visualisation of the D.C.C. is a Frienemy graph made with GraphViz. The graph (pdf format) shows how the exclusion of candidates helped or hindered the vote of other candidates. Help arrows are blue, hinder arrows are red. Thicker arrow lines are more significant than thinner (this is ranked, and only the most extreme four help/hinder relationships are shown).
pdf from google sites
I'm going to give the neato model a go to have it generate some easier to read clustering (but I've never used that so will need a play first). -
I think the electoral system actually works with 9 decimal places, they've probably chosen to just round to two for presentation.
My first stap at a visualisation of the D.C.C. is a Frienemy graph made with GraphViz.
Clear as... I got nothing.
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Is there a site that gives the breakdown of the Auckland Mayoral vote by ward and/or previous City? I'd be very interested to see how the candidates performed in the old Auckland City, and in particular if the vote for Banks increased or decreased over the previous Auckland elections.
I seem to recall that when Banks defeated Hubbard in the 2007 election his number of votes didn't increase by much compared to the2004 election, rather people didn't vote for Hubbard.
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That's an interesting graph David. Just trying to reconcile what I think I know about the results with your output... are the helped/hindered scaled as a function of the proportion a candidate received in the first preference round (so that initially popular candidates would have to helped A LOT to show up as being helped)?
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James- The ranking is (in a quick and dirty way) based on the effect the exclusion of candidates had on the other candidates vote at the time of next exclusion (or final result), so after all the recalculating effects have taken place. It is an outflow graph, so the scaling effect is based on the vote size of the excluded candidate, and how that changed others votes in absolute numbers (so no scaling for the inflow)
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So for example the exclusion of Samual Mann mildly benefited (mild friend) Shane Gallagher and (compared to all other candidates) mildly hindered (mild enemy) Jono Clark. OTOH when Jono Clark was excluded Shane Gallanger mildly benefited (mild friend).
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I seem to recall that when Banks defeated Hubbard in the 2007 election his number of votes didn't increase by much compared to the2004 election, rather people didn't vote for Hubbard.
Indeed. Banks got almost exactly the same number of votes when he was dumped as when he was re-elected.
That's why Brown's people worked so hard on registration and turnout.
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Ok. That makes some sense. It does produce some artefacts though; Richard Thomson appears to have no friends, but this because you include all iterations between exclusions, so when Thomson receives more votes than he needs (which might quality him for friending), the redistribution of his surplus makes him look unfriended. On the other hand, if you look at it in terms of helping him get elected, then nobody helps him get elected because he was elected at Iteration 1.
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