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Domain: elections.org.nz
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Comments · 12
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Re: Why quit?
Show us on the doll where the mean orange man hurt you...
My brain.
Seriously, I don't understand this big group of his supporters who can't perceive how comically incompetent he is.
Sorry for clipping your salient points, but it was to cut down on over-quoting for readability's sake.
In any 2 party democracy (US, UK, Australia and Canada for example),
The UK, Australia, and Canada, are not 2 party democracies -- they are multi-party, they usually have 4 or more political parties.
For example, the UK Parliament has 9 parties:
Conservative Party
Co-operative Party
Democratic Unionist Party
Green Party
Labour Party
Liberal Democrats
Plaid Cymru
Scottish National Party
Sinn Féin
see: https://www.parliament.uk/abou...The American political system is inherently unstable, with only two parties, it tends to be very polarised. In a multi-party democracy, when the major parties stop being representative, then new parties emerge -- in practice, this can't happen in the USA, though attempts have been made.
America is not really a democracy, it is essentially a 2 party dictatorship!
Probably New Zealand is the most democratic country in the world, as the relative proportions of the political parties in Parliament match those of the votes cast for each party.
see: https://www.elections.org.nz/v... -
Re:Kemp
That list is definitely wrong; in New Zealand I have never had to present ID to vote in the general elections.
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Re:Kemp
That list is definitely wrong; in New Zealand I have never had to present ID to vote in the general elections.
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Re:RMS is rightGiven that Flash Gordon comes from New Zealand, it's interesting to contrast and compare the NZ legislation around Electoral Rolls
In recognition of the fact enrolment is compulsory the Electoral Act contains very detailed provisions regulating the persons and organisations that the Electoral Commission is lawfully able to disclose information in electronic format from the electoral rolls, the permitted purposes and the information that can be made available.
From the Act itself:
Every person commits an offence who knowingly and wilfully supplies, receives, or uses information supplied in electronic form, or derived from information supplied in electronic form, under section 112, 113, or 114 for a purpose other than a purpose authorised by those sections.
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Re:It's passed
This copyright business isn't the only issue in New Zealand politics. The current government is also selling large numbers of public assets to overseas corporations, and also doing all the crazy tax reductions and public service cutting that we love so much about the US. Even if they did an about turn and abolished copyright in NZ I doubt I would want to vote for them. Also we have an MMP system so voting for those small parties with 11 seats can swing an election.
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Re:Democracy
This (and other crazy laws which have been repealed) was passed by the left-wing Labour Party government, which got voted out in a landslide in December.
Regardless of your political leanings -- and thanks for introducing them by the way, we're all really interested -- 58 seats to 43 is not a landslide.
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Permission to vote, Sir!
The idea that one's boss could grant or deny another person the right to vote is disturbing. It goes along with:
Did you vote at the right precinct?
Do you register to vote on the new 80-pound paper?
I'm rather fond of New Zealand's convention of voting on a Saturday, being assured of time off work even on a Saturday, and using fool-proof (and presumably machine-readable) ballot papers like this.
We don't need no steenking voting machines!
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Re:oh, so that's why
You know the reason for this?
We have elections on at the moment and the government is trying to sweeten the deal. Funny that microsoft got their real intentions found out with this one.
Microsoft should just keep it's mouth shut and maybe it will be more difficult to put it's foot in there. -
Re:Seeking compensation?While absolutely right, you missed the fact that a significant portion of NZs fucking _telephone_ network went down because of this.
Yeah, the fucking phones were out. I work for these guys (http://elections.org.nz/ Electoral Enrolment Centre ) and the timing was a little off, to say the least. Given that we produced the first rolls for the next election here just after, the timing was just a little off...
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New Zealand was the firstNew Zealand is the first nation to be a modern representative democracy! Since 1893 most adults regardless of gender or race were allowed to vote.
The USA lags behind that on both counts, although some states (Wyoming) predate it. Most european countries also took longer to extend the vote to all adults, e.g. in Great Britain certain occupations didn't get the vote until later.
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benevolent dictatorship
South Australia had one (unofficially) from 1938 for 27 years under Thomas Playford. He didn't allow for much discussion or dissent, but mostly he acted in the best interests of the people and our state. Now, if only that were always the case.
In our form of democracy, Thomas was elected by a small part of SA, and then elected again by the majority party to lead the elected reps, if that makes any sense, so, he personally wasn't elected by the majority of SA people, because he wasn't on a state ballot paper but on a subdivision electorate ballot paper. Personally I like the NZ system of proportional representation. It means some nutters get in, but it also means that people can see their vote counts, and that parliment does truly reflect the diversity of the population that elected it. Note. George Bush was not elected by a majority of USA citizens (not even the ones eligible to vote), so does that mean that the USA is no longer a democracy? -
Re:Read the report
As for your MMP voting system, never heard of it, sounds a bit complicated, interested in learning more though.
http://www.elections.org.nz/elections/esyst/govt_e lect.html
IMHO it is a good system. Like any sysyem, its not perfect, but I believe its mostly the best of several worlds. Your 'party vote' determines who the next government is (most likely a coalition) but your 'electorate vote' helps determine who the individual people are in that government. Its nice to be able to support a local candidate even if you don't like their party. The electorate vote lets you do this.
One of the most significant things about MMP is that it gives minor parties a much bigger chance of being part of a goverment than the old 'first past the post' system where a minor party could get sigificant numbers of votes in many electorates but not win any, therefore ending up with nothing and therefore lots of people were not represented. There is a threshold of 5% or one electorate member before a party's party vote counts. This tends to avoid the problem if one weirdo holding the balance of power in the house.