This is a summary of the Future for Local Government report - He piki tūranga, he piki kōtuku.

Recommendations that stood out to me were reducing the voting age for local elections to 16, implementing ranked voting (STV), and increasing the term limits to four years.

Also, not mentioned in RNZ’s summary is the recommendation that the number of local councils is reduced from 80 to about 15.

  • @DaveMA
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    21 year ago

    The party itself only has one vote.

    No, the party formally registered 9 new parties and split their members across them.

    Now they have a coalition of parties whose members all came from the same original party.

    • @BalpeenHammer
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      01 year ago

      No, the party formally registered 9 new parties and split their members across them.

      How many people are voting? If there are nine people voting each giving all of their votes for the parties then the parties should win and rule because they have more voters. Nine people voted for these parties while only five people voted for National and four for Labour.

      • @DaveMA
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        21 year ago

        Your voting system says that every voter can vote for as many parties as they like. As I explained in my post, there are 10 voters. 5 voted only for National. 4 voted only for Labour.

        1 voter voted for 10 different subsidiary parties of the Legalise Marijuana Party.

        When we add up the votes, the Legalise Marijuana Party coalition has 10 votes compared to 5 for National and 4 for Labour.

        • @BalpeenHammer
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          01 year ago

          As I explained in my post, there are 10 voters. 5 voted only for National. 4 voted only for Labour.

          OK.

          1 voter voted for 10 different subsidiary parties of the Legalise Marijuana Party.

          OK.

          When we add up the votes, the Legalise Marijuana Party coalition has 10 votes compared to 5 for National and 4 for Labour.

          it doesn’t matter. The coalition will not get seats as a coalition. National gets five seats of the ten seat parliament. Labour gets four seats. All the rest of the parties are tied for third place with one vote each. Whatever the tie break process is will determine who gets the last seat.

          Honestly I don’t know why this is so confusing for you. Each of those parties only has one vote. They are all tied for last place. They can’t combine their votes or transfer their votes to somebody else.

          • @DaveMA
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            21 year ago

            Honestly I don’t know why this is so confusing for you

            I don’t know why either.

            it doesn’t matter. The coalition will not get seats as a coalition. National gets five seats of the ten seat parliament. Labour gets four seats.

            Wait, what? There are 19 votes from the 10 voters, how come National gets 5 seats from 5 votes? What would have happened if 2 of the National voters also voted for Labour, and one of the Labour voters also voted for National? Then the Labour and National tally total could have been 6 for National and 6 for Labour, how would the 10 seats get allocated then?

            Your voting system is to allow people to vote for as many parties as they like and tally up all the ticks. That’s all you explained, however, it seems there is a lot more to it in terms of how those ticks are translated to seats. Is this a real-world voting system where you can point me to a wikipedia page or something that can explain it to someone like me who just doesn’t get it?

            • @BalpeenHammer
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              11 year ago

              Wait, what? There are 19 votes from the 10 voters, how come National gets 5 seats from 5 votes?

              because each of those parties only got one vote.

              What would have happened if 2 of the National voters also voted for Labour, and one of the Labour voters also voted for National?

              The total votes would get counted for each party as before. If two of the national voters also voted for labour and one labour voter also voted for national there would be a tie and the tie break process would be invoked. Presumably since there are enough seats to accomodate both parties both parties would get equal seats because they got equal percent of the votes.

              Is this a real-world voting system where you can point me to a wikipedia page or something that can explain it to someone like me who just doesn’t get it?

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#:~:text=Approval voting allows voters to,consider to be reasonable choices.

              • @DaveMA
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                1 year ago

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#:~:text=Approval voting allows voters to,consider to be reasonable choices.

                This page basically says that this is only used for finding the most popular candidate (e.g. voting for a Mayor or Pope). There is no example that I can find on how you might take the votes from an approval voting system and assign seats in a parliament from those results.

                Ok, let’s step away from my example where I’m trying to show abuse, and instead look at a normal looking vote.

                100 voters. 5 political parties: Greens, Labour, NZ First, National, Act.

                • 10 voters vote for both Greens and Labour.
                • 20 voters vote for only Labour.
                • 8 voters vote for Both Labour and NZ First.
                • 5 voters vote for only NZ First
                • 2 voters vote for NZ First and National
                • 25 voters vote for only National
                • 17 voters vote for National and Act
                • 13 voters vote for only Act

                This means there are:

                • 10 votes for Greens
                • 38 votes for Labour
                • 15 votes for NZ First
                • 44 votes for National
                • 30 votes for Act

                There are 137 votes total cast by 100 voters.

                Let’s say there are 120 seats like in our parliament. How do you allocate the seats to the parties based on the above votes?

                • @BalpeenHammer
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                  01 year ago

                  This page basically says that this is only used for finding the most popular candidate (e.g. voting for a Mayor or Pope). There is no example that I can find on how you might take the votes from an approval voting system and assign seats in a parliament from those results.

                  I explained that to you.

                  Right now we apportion the seats according to percentage of the vote. We would do the same thing.

                  Let’s say there are 120 seats like in our parliament. How do you allocate the seats to the parties based on the above votes?

                  you take the total number of votes and the votes each party got and you apportion seats according to what percent of the total they got.

                  Same as we do now.

                  • @DaveMA
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                    21 year ago

                    You threw me off by telling me in my other example that rhere would need to be a tie breaker for third. Why? Lets assume there are 190 seats. If we apportion by votes, doesn’t this mean National get 50 seats, Labour gets 40 seats, and the 10 Legalise Marijuana parties get 10 seats each?

                    Let’s say there are 10 voters, and the election is only for parties. National has a list of potential MPs.

                    National:

                    • Steve
                    • Fred
                    • Jim
                    • Bob
                    • Frank

                    Labour has put forward their candidates:

                    • Susan
                    • Mia
                    • Tama
                    • Oliver
                    • Stevie

                    And then the Legalise Marijuana party saw a loophole, and so has registered a bunch of extra parties. Theirs looks like this:

                    LM1:

                    • Jonathan

                    LM2:

                    • Katie

                    LM3:

                    • Sally

                    LM4:

                    • Jimmy

                    LM5:

                    • PJ

                    LM6:

                    • Bobby

                    LM7:

                    • Kelly

                    LM8:

                    • Mary

                    LM9:

                    • Jane

                    LM10:

                    • Watson

                    Now our 10 voters come into the voting booth, and they see the list of options:

                    • National
                    • Labour
                    • LM1
                    • LM2
                    • LM3
                    • LM4
                    • LM5
                    • LM6
                    • LM7
                    • LM8
                    • LM9
                    • LM10

                    5 voters want to vote for National, so they only vote for National. They are all against legalising marijuana and don’t like Labour’s policies so they don’t vote for anyone else.

                    4 voters want to vote for Labour, so they do. They are also all against legalising marijuana and don’t like National’s policies so they don’t vote for anyone else.

                    1 voter wants to vote for the Legalise Marijuana party. The party has told them how they can vote for all 10 of their subsidiaries, so they do this.

                    Now we add up the votes.

                    5 for National 4 for Labour 10 for Legalise Marijuana subsidiary parties

                    The Legalise Marijuana party now has 52% of the seats and so can pass their law, but only 1 out of 10 voters actually voted for them.

                    You say this is fair because they all had the same number of potential votes. I say it’s unfair because 10% of votes got 52% of seats