Comments on: Kids set back children’s franchise 100 years

By: zANavAShi

zANavAShi — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 05:19:19 +0000

ROFLMAO @ Steve’s puppy comment. I don’t have a witty enough reply that does that justice, but it’s the only belly laugh I had all week. Thanks!

By: Joseph

Joseph — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:03:17 +0000

Coming from a “kid” here, hell yeah. Reflective of the fact that children aren’t thinking for the income, and thinking for the people. If the Green policy for 16-year-olds to vote had got through I certainly would’ve voted Greens/ALCP this year. (ALCP because it’s an issue I have a passion for). Well, actually I would’ve voted Alliance based on policies, but since it unfortunately would be a throwaway vote…

By: Stephen

Stephen — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 00:09:33 +0000

ha!

By: Steve Pierson

Steve Pierson — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:19:17 +0000

I use past tense because he emigrated to Australia.

By: Steve Pierson

Steve Pierson — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:17:51 +0000

my puppy never paid tax. he objected to the culture of envy.

By: Tane

Tane — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:13:32 +0000

When they start working, paying tax and articulating their political beliefs like 16 year olds can, then it might be worth considering.

By: MikeE

MikeE — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 23:06:57 +0000

Why don’t we just give Puppies franchise too?

By: Dylan

Dylan — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:59:50 +0000

The B&B and ALCP portion of the overall “vote’ roughly matches that proportion that can’t be arsed voting anyway. They clearly don’t take it seriously and probably have no real idea what it’s all about ..just like their adult counterparts.

To be pedantic, the ALCP isn’t a joke party. They’re a single-issue party, sure, but it is a serious issue. Maybe not one of the top three issues faced by NZ right now, but it sure deserves more sober (ahem) attention than it gets.

By: Uroskin

Uroskin — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:42:12 +0000

We deny younger members of society the vote (even if they work and pay tax) on an irrational basis. Why don’t we also deny the elderly (senile, non-taxpaying) members of society the vote too, if we’re going to use irrationallity as an electoral policy. Isn’t NZ First as much a joke party for the old as Bill&Ben is for the young?

By: Steve Withers

Steve Withers — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:49:35 +0000

The B&B and ALCP portion of the overall “vote” roughly matches that proportion that can’t be arsed voting anyway. They clearly don’t take it seriously and probably have no real idea what it’s all about…..just like their adult counterparts.

By: Byron

Byron — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 07:00:03 +0000

I’m not going to find all the stats and do the math myself, but it would be interested to see what the election result would be if these teenagers had the right to vote and had done so the same way they did in this exercise, wouldn’t be impossible, just find the percentage of high school aged New Zealanders, treat this as a poll and extropolate from there, then add it to the total of the actual vote and work out the percentage. (probably another step or two I’m forgetting)

By: Felix

Felix — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:28:47 +0000

As for underhangs and “joke” parties, this is 13,000 votes in total with 11.7% of that going to the Bill & Ben Party.

That’s about 1500 votes for Bill & Ben.

I don’t think that’s going to get them much closer to winning a seat.

By: Felix

Felix — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:17:29 +0000

QoT,

I wouldn’t mind lowering the voting age if we could institute some kind of test to screen for kids who are only voting one way because That’s Who Daddy Votes For

Why would such a test be valid when applied to children but not to adults?

By: lyndon

lyndon — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:32:52 +0000

Seems they don’t get any further seats.

I’m pretty sure Colin Espiner did a post about this before the election (But I can’t find a @#%# archive).

Pointed out that all those people who wanted fewer MPs could vote for Bill and Ben.

–

The words I have to type to post this are “BETHROTHED Dunne”. WTF?

By: QoT

QoT — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:28:06 +0000

On the one hand I want to say, I wouldn’t mind lowering the voting age if we could institute some kind of test to screen for kids who are only voting one way because That’s Who Daddy Votes For (only leftie in my high school, can ya sense the bitterness?).

But then I recall that plenty of mature, supposedly rational adults vote based on far stupider things, so would it really change that much?

I’m with Stephen – I think that the results would be rather different if the kids knew their votes counted (just as I think Bill & Ben’s real party votes would’ve been a lot lower if we had no 5% threshold.)