Hoping special votes will be enough turn the tides to the left for us.
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@jwp @pipesunlimited But if NZ First or ACT lose seats in specials they are not govt.
Yeah there are quite a few permutations. Its one, but the thing that really makes me furious is the party vote which is the mandate, is effectively nulled with this situation. Which shouldn't be possible. Defeats the proportionality and is a massive constitutional crises moment
@jwp
> The party vote which is the mandate, is effectively nulled with this situation. Which shouldn't be possible
100%. The population has almost doubled since 1999, but the size of a standard Parliament had stayed the same. One could argue that Parliament is too small to maintain proportionality.
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I mean sure, but that needs to be entrenched by structural design. Not gamed. Likewise electorates are fiction that needs to go away.
@jwp
> electorates are fiction that needs to go away
I tend to think the opposite; electorates represent a geographical constituency that is unarguably real. Political parties are fictions that need to go away.
I think the Keep FPP campaign gamed the original referendum by block voting for MMP, presuming it would lose the subsequent referendum against FPP. We would have got more proportionality by keeping electorates but electing them via STV (or something).
I think electorates work on same psychological biases Social Media misinformation engineering does. People vote for someone they feel has social cohesiveness, and excuse candidates from party politics to prevent dissonance. That's not real because ultimately electorate MP's are functionally list MP's once in.
@AndrewRiddell1 @pipesunlimited
@jwp
> ultimately electorate MP's are functionally list MP's once in
To some degree, but only because Parliamentary convention gives political parties so much power over them. If anything MMP has made this worse, and worse again now that they have the power to force a by-election if they leave their party.
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I'd say we need to either increase the default size of Parliament, or as I've suggested before, divide it into an upper and lower house. One determined by the party vote (or sortition), and one made up of electorate MPs (maybe with rules against parties endorsing candidates?).
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@strypey
I don't think actual standing orders or adding (back) a senate/upper chamber is needed or desirable. Agree on the splitting Party from A smaller rural/provincial/māori roll. We already have the structural components to do this and we badly need to entrench Māori roll properly anyway. Just abolish Electorates make Party STV and present opt in for Mana Whenua/Provincial interests that are not population gated but based on actual Rohe and Identity
@jwp
> I don't think actual standing orders or adding (back) a senate/upper chamber is needed or desirable.
Why not? The NZ Parliament is 1 of the few elected government systems in the world to be unicameral. Our single house has total dictatorial power for 3 years (4 if the Chrises get their way). This is undemocratic in theory, and the last 30 years prove that pretty conclusively that MMP doesn't fix that.
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@jwp
> splitting Party from A smaller rural/provincial/māori roll. We already have the structural components to do this
I don't understand what components you mean, or what you're proposing. But I'm very keen to if you'd care to expand on that.
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@pipesunlimited
One of the problems with nationals low party vote, the special even if they swing all left - it doesn't change makeup, they would need to swing an electorate seat to have influence. The electorate system is cooked