Posts by Keir Leslie
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And has been outperformed on that by Turei.
Nah, to be blunt, Turei has been lost in the damage control over the billboards. It must hurt to have to apologise for something so fucking funny.
(Speaking of which, how dumb was it to (a) tell his partner and (b) admit that they had talked about it ? Surely an activist understand plausible deniability, and that once you've discussed plausible deniability it isn't plausible any more? And honestly, Norman looks like he's either incompetent or complicit, which is a shame.)
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Apart from the dozen or so of them that look likely to be in the next parliament you mean?
No, I don't. Those ones have serious list candidacies, but pointless electorate candidacies.
The argument seems to be that the Greens should be allowed to run pointless, unwinnable candidates, but that fringey-mcfringe weirdo shouldn't. I disagree; I think that fringey-mcfringe is being more honest and more upfront than the Greens, and so shouldn't be punished for his beliefs. I think that is precisely the Greens that ought get caught by this kind of thing.
I would prefer not to have a deposit scheme like the present one at all, but if we do, this seems to be it working.
I do think Greenbrook-Held wants to win Helensville; he hasn't a hope, of course, but he is trying to get electorate votes. Many Green candidates actively don't want electorate votes.
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Hmm? They don't have to. The defence of the present deposit system is that the candidate has to decide whether or not they reckon they can get 5%. If they don't get 5%, they lose the deposit. Now, this is very bad, in my opinion, when it impacts on fringe candidates, because many of them are seriously contesting the election in a bid to win, and this means that people are unable to use the electorate contest for the purpose for which it primarily exists.
It isn't that bad, in my opinion, when it hurts minor parties who run candidates solely to get out the party vote, because I do not think that that is the purpose of the an electorate contest.
Now, I don't think the Electoral Commission should try and determine which candidates are serious at all. I think that, however, inasmuch as that is the purpose of the deposit, it is working when it puts pressure on the Greens not to run pointless candidates, when it makes Act think twice about running in seats they don't want to win.
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The Greens in particular – Graham, Ross I hope, Hughes I have seen in action in Ohariu – are good at the meet-the-candidate events they are invited to as electorate candidates – at asking specifically for the party vote.
I.e. they are using the candidacy to promote a different thing. Why shouldn’t they have to chip in a bit to help cover the cost of this handy promotional opportunity, to think a little about how much their desire for publicity will cost the public?
(Of course the Electoral Act doesn’t. But suppose someone decides to run to draw attention to their pet cause, say, breast cancer. But they don’t want to win, you see. Just raise awareness. That seems like exactly the kind of thing a deposit ought discourage.)
So why not discourage Green candidacies that aren’t going anywhere? Surely if there’s any kind of candidacy we want to discourage, that’s exactly it: one that clutters the issue by involving candidates who have no desire to win, that are purely running as stunts.
(Really, I think we should just get rid of the 5% rule. You get your deposit back a week after the election no matter how many votes you get. Still forces people to be a bit committed, cause it’s money, but there’s no fear that you won’t get it back (and any bank under the sun will lend you the money for the duration.) I don't understand why we ought be worried about total fringers; they can already get on the ballot paper quite easily.)
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I'm not describing it as a rort; I don't really like the idea of deposits, to be honest. But if we have deposits, the idea would seem to be to discourage candidates who have no hope of winning, but run anyway.
The Greens, for example, are precisely the kind of candidates that should be discouraged under this idea of the deposit. By pushing slightly more of the costs of the election onto them, it makes them less likely to run candidates without a hope of winning, and so reduces the number of pointless candidacies. And Green candidacies where the candidate isn't pushing for candidate votes are purposely pointless, using the electoral system as a publicity machine. So why shouldn't they have to chip in?
But take someone who passionately believes in their prospect of success, who is running because they really think that the electorate will realise what a great idea they have. They really want to win. They pay the deposit, and they haven't a hope of getting it back. And that seems like a real shame, because it is likely that it does have a chilling effect on ideas.
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Oddly enough, it is precisely the minor parties' electorate candidates I have the least sympathy towards. They are running purely for promotional reasons, not to win the election, and I think it is entirely fair that if Graham Kennedy wants to raise his profile by running in the Ilam electorate without a chance of winning, he should help meet the costs of his publicity stunt.
It's the (crazies and the loons) ahem, sorry, independent candidates, the single issue types and the desperate no-hopers that seem hard done by: they really do want to win, and they are the least likely to be able to afford it, and they would also be the least likely to be able to collect a large number of nominations.
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I think that at this point they just have to publish and be damned. It is all very mucky and annoying, and I have to admit I am really kinda curious.
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In what Universe are these guys unable to have a face to face meeting to do whatever signalling they haven’t already done with each other a hundred times? Indeed wouldn’t they want to do it in private if they wanted any chance of real signals, and a meaningful discussion?
Because that isn't how people work. Remember the Burger King meeting? These are just people who are in a very very stressful job, working every waking minute, and when they are in a room with each other they will talk shop.
(And remember that we are all very textual people. Politicians are not in general. They are oral, and they are physical. You have to be, to do that job.)
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Yes, where in the 7*24*4 = 672 hours during the campaign could they possibly find the time to pick up a telephone? Or get any of their thousand flunkies to do it.
Well, like I said, face to face. It is likely that there are things that the two Johns want to say to each other that they don't want to say over the phone, or have a flunky say. It is also likely that these things they say are not massively important in and of themselves, but serve some kind of signalling function.
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I wouldn't be surprised if Key and Banks talked real actual politics. Heaps of this stuff needs to be done face to face/man to man, and those chances don't happen often in an election campaign.