Explainer - Radical overhaul is needed - that is the conclusion reached by a panel which spent two years reviewing the state of local government. RNZ has all you need to know.

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.

  • @DaveMAEnglish
    2•1 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?

    • @BalpeenHammerEnglish
      1•1 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.

      • @DaveMAEnglish
        2•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?

        • @BalpeenHammerEnglish
          0•1 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.

          • @DaveMAEnglish
            2•1 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

            • @BalpeenHammerEnglish
              0•1 year ago

              Honestly at this point there is no sense in continuing this conversation because you just willfully misunderstand what is being said. Party votes are decided on a percentage of the votes basis and that will not change. There will be threshold and that will not change. It’s just that you don’t “waste” your vote because you can give your vote to more than one party and they will get a percentage of that vote. It’s as simple as that.

              You continually, willfully, dishonestly, and maliciously present ten parties as somehow consolidating or trading their votes to combine them and that’s just dishonest. Each party will get a percentage of the total votes. They are not allowed to add them up and say “see we now have enough votes to get more seats”.

              • @DaveMAEnglish
                2•1 year ago

                Honestly at this point there is no sense in continuing this conversation because you just willfully misunderstand what is being said.

                I’m sorry, you seemed willing to explain and I genuinely do not understand why my concerns aren’t valid (though you have certainly done your best to try to explain it so thank you for that). I suspect I may just not really get it, but the approval voting wikipedia page just assumes it’s only used for picking a top candidate so doesn’t help at all. I even tried getting chatGPT to explain it to me but it told me:

                Seat allocation in parliamentary systems is usually determined by a variety of methods, including party-list proportional representation, mixed-member proportional representation, or single-member districts. These systems take into account the overall share of votes a party receives and aim to allocate seats in a way that reflects the proportionality of the vote.

                Approval voting, on the other hand, does not directly account for the proportionality of votes. It focuses on identifying the candidate with the most approvals without considering the order of preferences or the relative strength of support for different parties. As a result, using approval voting for seat allocation in a Parliament may not adequately reflect the diversity of voter preferences or the proportionality of votes received by different parties.

                I apologise if you got the impression I was faking stupidity, I assure you it’s genuine.

                • @BalpeenHammerEnglish
                  0•1 year ago

                  We apportion seats according to percentage of votes casts. We would use the exact same method. Why is this so confusing to you? Count the votes cast, count votes for the party, take a percentage. You continually keep saying that the “sub parties” will be able to transfer their votes to the “parent party” and allow the parent party to get more seats. That’s not allowed now and it won’t be allowed under this system.

                  So yea I don’t believe that you are genuine at all. I think you are wilfully and disingenuously misunderstanding something I keep repeating over and over again.