s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

We voted yesterday. It is so cool that NZ lets us vote here, you just need to be a resident for a year. Very fair. They are also very aggressive about getting people to enrole to vote, and apparently this year they reached 95% of eligible voters on the rolls.Looks like onyl about 75% of the people voted though, which has them disappointed. (but wow thats better than the US!)

New Zealand uses a MMP (mixed member proportional) parlimenary system. This is interesting and fun. You get two votes, one for your electorate seat, and the other a party votes. The electorate seats are a “normal” first past the post sort of election, whoever gets the most votes wins. But these seats only account for about half of parliment, the rest are apportioned based on party votes.

To get into parliment, your party must either (A) win an electorate seat, or (B) get 5%+ of the party vote. This means that for the large parties the electorate seats are not super-important, but the party vote is. For some of the very small parties, the electorate seat is totally vital, as if they only get 1.5% of the party vote it is the only way to get 1 or 2 members into parliment.

NZ is also very voter-friendly, as once you are on the rolls you can vote anywhere. Much easier than in the States! They also hold the election on a Saturday, which is much more convenient.

Watching the results roll in last night at Steve and Jennifers place was rather harrowing. At the start of the count National had a large lead (43% to 37% in party vote), but as the night wore on and more votes were counted, it got closer and closer. Eventually labor just managed to inch ahead (about 40.2% to 39.8%, exact number depending on special vote counts). This gives labor 50 seats, and national 49. And You need 61+ to form a goverment. A handful of smaller parties won seats including the Greens (6), New Zealand First (7), United Future (3), Jim Andersons Progressives (1- Jim!), ACT (2), and the Maori Party (4). This gives 124 saets, not the noral 120. This is due to “overhang” caused by the Maori party electorate victories. This is an interesting phenomina where a party wins more electorate seats than it would be “entitled to” based on their % of the party vote. So Parliment is temporarily expanded to even out the numbers.

We just hope that Helen Clark (the Labor leader) can manage to craft a coalition that manages a full 3 years. We don’t want to “pull an Italy”, and do this all again in 5 months. If National had managed a 1-seat majority, a short-lived government seems much mroe likely, as most of their potential coalition parters had “messy-self-destruction” written all over them. Probably because National spent a lot of election effort trying to wipe out and steal the voters from their two most obvious partners (ACT adn NZ First). I expect Winston (of NZ First), is not feeling very happy about National right now.

Democracy in action. It is much mre exciting when you have multiple parties. It was very refreshing to cast a ballot, without feeling I was just voting for the “lesser evil!”