Posts by BenWilson
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A mirror image of B is also the same as B upside down, which could be consistent with someone else holding you down and doing it. But surely O would be less ambiguous - I'd think carving B on a woman would be more likely to stand for 'Female Dog'. But it all sounds hoaxy.
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As Jim Anderton wryly mentioned last night in the minor party leaders' debate - Labour won more votes than National in 1978 and 1981 but the media didn't clamour for Labour to become government then.
There was a lot of clamouring, and it even led to political change, MMP stood on the back of those poor results.
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The Herald made the point that the biggest party not getting into the government would cause discontent. I'm sure it would with the voters for that party but it remains to be seen if the population as a whole would be particularly bitter.
I can see some point to if it a government is formed with an actual minority of party votes due to overhang. Then we'll hear 'maorimander' a lot. Serious tactical voting by Labourites could help a lot - if they voted Maori instead of Labour in the electorates, and if they voted National in Epsom to keep Hide out. It would be no more tactical than Epsom National voters voting ACT to get National in, as happened last time.
Voting National to keep National out is the kind of insanity that thresholds encourage.
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Tom, sure can explain. It's pretty simple - the differences between Labour and National are a lot smaller in many cases than their differences to the other parties. If a coalition must happen, and it usually must, there's nothing contradictory about the idea of a large one instead of 'bare majority' one. Nothing at all. Decisions would need to negotiated between the parties.
It could make sense from both parties point of view, depending on the extremity of the minor parties.
If National can't get the numbers and need, say, the Maori party to support them, then it's quite possible that what Labour would demand would be closer to National's tastes than the Maori party. To even flirt with the idea would probably force the minor parties to the center.
Labour could also prefer to wield minor partner status than be stuck in opposition. They could demand a lot of portfolios, and if National wasn't playing ball from the bigger portfolios (I'd assume the bigger party would demand at least the PM and Finance portfolios), then they could blow the partnership apart. So it would be on the bigger party to forge consensus, and in their interests to do so.
I'm not sure if I answered your question now - you're suggesting that having principles and believing in compromise are mutually exclusive? I don't think so. It's one of the fundamental tensions in all human group decision making. Power without principle can tend to evil, but principle without power is useless. Reality is in between. That is how voters swing between Labour and National - they're not mad, they just find both parties have some things to offer that they agree with.
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Brent
> So I can only conclude that wasted votes are an intended consequence of the current system.
Not really. The Royal Commission report recommended a threshold of 4% (now 5%) to avoid a large number of small parties in parliament
Since a large number of parties stand and are voted for that is just another way of saying that those votes are deliberately excluded.
It always amazes me the number of parties that register for the election, and the obvious effort that some of them go through in order to try and get people to vote for them (see the party lists) , when it is blatantly obvious that they'll never get anywhere near the 5% threshold. (Are they so reality-averse that they think they can ?).
What's hard about the idea that they might believe in what they are standing for? It's not a matter of being 'reality averse'. It's about taking some pride in getting however many people they do get, to vote for them DESPITE the fact they won't get any representation. Much like voting Green in the USA. Believe it or not there are viable political views that don't make the numbers. If the numbers were lower, they would. That they can't is built into our MMP.
I still think MMP is a vast improvement on the previous system though, which entrenched the wasted vote to a much greater extent.
Imagine if there was no threshold, so about 0.8% would be enough to get a seat (about 20,000 votes) ? How many hundreds more people would think that this was a possibility and set up a party to try to get into Parliament ?
A lot probably. Why does that bother you? I don't see any particular virtue in the party machines. They are a virus that infected our democracy. MMP was brought in mainly in recognition of this, that parties had pretty much subverted the entire idea of representative democracy, to the point where people weren't voting for representatives any more, they were mostly voting for parties, and parties were thus excluding all other representation. And the way that parties were being selected was pretty unfair because it was so unproportional. I'm surprised the party virus ever allowed MMP to bust it up so much, but it held on with thresholds.
I mean seriously what the hell does it add that John Key has 50-odd other duschbags following him because to be in power they must? Does it add anything at all to the quality of the decisions he will preside over? Partys are giant antidemocratic blocs which seek to impose ideologies we don't really care about over us and tell us we asked for them. Breaking down what we believe in into 2 or even 10 choices is just crap IMHO. OK it's less crap than any other system we've tried before, but that doesn't mean it can't be improved upon.
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Graeme, when I say 1/120 I'm only approximating. I guess in reality the calculation is quite a lot more complex since there are potentially a lot of wasted votes on every party that doesn't meet the threshold, and all the 'between threshold wastage too' especially since we don't round votes up, so an actual threshold per seat would be set after counting. Or some other method, like you say. Filling the seats biggest vote count first until they're all there - that could prevent overhangs I guess, if that seems like a big problem. Doesn't to me - the method of voting in parliament is on binary propositions so it's either passed by a majority, or it isn't. How many people is really of no consequence to the fairness of it.
You can argue the minutiae but I think everyone can pretty much understand the idea of no thresholds without knowing the exact algorithm. At the large end of the vote count it would be neatly proportional. At the small end it would probably not be, some people could get in by tiny advantages over other people, one vote differences would be technically possible. But they'd also be allotted to very small numbers of people so their influence over the final outcome would not be particularly unproportional.
Certainly the thresholds as they do exist are a long way from allowing one person to hold one seat on the basis of enough party votes and no electoral votes at all. The wasted vote factor is far higher than under a no-threshold system - currently EVERYONE who votes for a party that doesn't make 5% (and has no electorate) has no representation at all. It's possible to imagine scenarios with a lower threshold system where the same or more wastage occurs, but the likelihood of it seems considerably less. So I can only conclude that wasted votes are an intended consequence of the current system.
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What Beagle said! It's totally conceivable that the threshold could have been made at one seat formed from party votes - that's what I was trying to say, and what I meant by 'no threshold'.
It would certainly mean more parties would get in, including plenty of nutjobs. But there would also be some quality people too, who don't get in currently, and furthermore there are also plenty of nutjobs in there under the current system. I don't think the arguments for thresholds are usually made around the prevention of nutjobs - they usually come from beliefs about the need for 'stable' government. Parties keep the troops in line, so they don't chop and change. That's the idea. The fact that the entire party can chop and change is not addressed at all and happens all the time in our current system, but that's considered stable.
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Who would they loose power to?
Other parties at any election. Of course if they do actually go fascist there wouldn't be any elections but I can't see that happening - why would they need to do that if they were getting voted in anyway, not to mention that it would not be tolerated by the population?
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Well clearly the lowest the threshold can be is 1/120th of the total party vote, since there are 120 seats. Any lower would make no sense. But that would make sense. Then anyone who can get that number of votes can get a seat. There would be no need at all for parties then (although there would still be advantages to them (for the parties if not for the country)).
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It would end up as being a small cabal of "people of influence" running the country with little or no input from society as a whole, let your imagination run riot with that concept.
More of the status quo, then?
Seriously, the idea of representatives not being in big blocs is how our form of democracy started, and the whole superimposition of a right and left wing is an afterthought. I think it's a testament to the 'western' way of thinking, that we force it into camps. That's why I've always hated the threshold system in MMP.
I mean I don't really give a crap about right or left wing. It's individual issues that matter. I don't think our parties align themselves that way either - it's more a case of left and right wing aligning themselves with the parties than the other way around, since what is right wing in one country or time is left in the other.
As for the danger of a grand coalition being totalitarian, I highly doubt it. They would continue to be centrist or their support would drop and they'd lose power. Internally they would wrangle a great deal and would actually not bring forward anything that wouldn't be to the liking of both sides, which would make them less wild in their swings from centrism than the current setup is.
If it's hard to get your head around, that is more of a statement about where your head is at than the impracticality of the option. I'm not pointing at you especially, Steve, that "your" is pointing to the whole nation.
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