Posts by Kyle Matthews
-
I didn't support hard labour so I voted "no". Was it that difficult?
I wanted it broken into three different questions:
1. Should there be a reform of the justice system?
2. Should any reform place greater emphasis on the needs of victims, providing restitution and compensation for them?
3. Should any reform impose minimum sentences and hard labour for all serious violent offences?Yes/Umm, OK/No.
-
Happened across the States in 2004. Just enough votes to switch from Kerry to Bush to not be too noticeable but enough to win.
Yeah, I know it happens. It's just stupid.
If computer game designers can tell when my avatar in a shooting game hits the bad guy, when both my avatar and the bad guy are moving around, I'm not sure why they can't tell when a person is pushing a static button.
Not to get up in arms or anything, but some would say having your vote registered correctly is kinda important.
Trusting the system that registers it, also kinda important.
-
ARGH! I fucking hate questions like that.
The 1999 referendum question on law and order was similarly annoying. Apparently rewriting it in the ballot box and then ticking it, doesn't work.
-
What about Destiny City??
Did anyone else think "Jonestown"?
-
No, not if they actually had confidence in who they were voting for (which I suspect most of them did in that case). For the record, I wouldn't use the No Confidence option for my electorate vote this time around, but I'd like to have it there as an option.
In which case the result wouldn't change. The point of putting options on the ballot paper is that possibly they could result in something different and/or useful. The two options from having no confidence on the paper are the same MP or no MP, which is a terrible result.
Exactly. A successful party apparently has to be launched by a sitting MP. If we run out of MPs who have consciences, then where will we be?
A situation not improved at all by a no confidence option. And there's nothing stopping people creating parties without an MP, it's just very hard work and hasn't been done successfully under MMP yet.
Not necessarily. Perhaps they just didn't want his opponent to be elected.
Well, Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, so it's somewhat a moot point.
But the idea that the fate of his party, which was consistently the largest party in German elections in the 1930s, would have been different if there was a no confidence option is wild speculation. This is a party that got over 40% of the vote, there obviously was a fair bit of confidence in them.
Maybe they would have preferred that option. At the last election, I remember hearing a few voters in Tauranga being quoted in the media indicating that they weren't voting for a candidate, they were voting against one who they thought was more odious. They clearly didn't have confidence in who they were voting for.
I've just run an election in which some of the candidates weren't qualified to stand up at the podium, let alone do the job, and all of them were elected over the no confidence option by a mile. It does not work, which is why it doesn't appear in our democracy. People vote for candidates, which is a good thing because democracy is should be about making positive choices, not turning up and voting for nothing.
-
Well, if PotC was a disappointment on that score, maybe you should try 'Apocalypto'. It totally showcases Mels more gentle and sensitive side as a director.
See, I quite enjoyed that as a movie. But yes, not exactly happy families.
-
Since when does software need to be calibrated? Am I missing something?
I presume calibration means "when a person pushes in this part of the screen, put a tick by this name". The machine is probably generic and you can recalibrate it using that little memory card he had to do a completely different election. Different card has different ballots in it, different names etc.
Why a machine should "fall out of callibration"? That's dodgy or fucked up. It's just maths, which shouldn't change during the day.
-
Over the other side of Pacific, watch this video of a screwed up voting machine:
Seriously, an argument for little bits of paper if ever I saw one.
-
Which is how I reach my conclusion that unless they do better than expected next weekend, National need the Maori Party to actively support them for them to form a government.
And if they did actively support on confidence and supply, you'd have to wonder how many pieces of legislation they'd actually vote for.
-
Kyle: I could be wrong, and often am, but re your calculations for the Maori Party, I'm pretty sure you don't actually get list MPs if you have an overhang, by definition. List MPs top you up to the level of MPs you should get based on the percentage of your vote.
I mean, 2 of the MPs will be covered by the party vote, so won't increase the size of parliament. I should have said "covered by the party vote" rather than list MPs, which they indeed won't have. The remaining 4 or 5 or whatever will be overhang.
Peter Dunne and Jim Anderton will be overhang if their parties only get to 0.5% or whatever.
If there's 5 Maori overhang MPs, plus Peter Dunne and Jim Anderton are both overhang MPs, parliament will have 127 MPs. If all Maori party MPs abstain, there'll be 120 voting on confidence and supply. You'll need 61 from National, Act, and Peter Dunne to get there, which seems unlikely to me.
And if Rodney didn't win Epsom, that would seem to be impossible.