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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A recent Gordon Campbell column mentioned a suggestion to separate representation from proportionality. Maybe by having only electorate MPs, but giving party leaders more votes to achieve proportionality according to the party vote. I think this is worthy of consideration.
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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