Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, October 21st, 2008 - 57 comments
Categories: election 2008, vote smart -
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I’ve come in for a bit of flak for this ‘Vote Smart‘ series of posts on how people can make the most of their vote but I don’t resile from it. It seems to me the criticism is based on a quaint notion that there is an optimal party and candidate for everyone and they should give their votes to them no matter what, then the system will spit out a perfectly representative Parliament. In fact, parties and candidates are vehicles for getting our voices heard and most people are careful not to waste their vote by voting for a party that is certain to get into Parliament, even if another party might be better in their eyes. Some people just have the opportunity to take that tactical voting one step further. Like the people of Epsom.
If you’re a leftie in Epsom, you face two unsavoury choices – your MP will either be Nat Richard Worth or Act’s Rodney Hide. Word is, Hide’s support has suffered from his buffoonery and Worth could be in with a chance. If you give your candidate vote to Worth you could help him beat Hide and, in doing so, push ACT out of Parliament. That would be a major boost for the Left’s chances of forming the next government. So, keep your party vote with Labour or the Greens but hold your nose and tick Worth.
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Scoopit!
Hooton is busy at headquarters taking every word or phrase and sending out orders to use it in that libertarian-ass-backwards-no-realtion-to-reality. He’s flat out.
But Felix, the ACT Party, in its majestic attack on privilege, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Why are you defending privilege, Felix?
MMP in New Zealand, like Richard Worth, is a joke. Rodney should carry the electorate fairly easily because every educated National voter will back him, after all they need him to form a government.
Then we either get what we have had with Labour (a virtually ineffective coalition government) or, we will get a government to far to the right.
If National or Labour can manage to hold a solid majority then we should at least get some firm direction, but because both parties are trying to pander to potential coalition partners we are stuck with weak policies that offer no solutions.
Tane,
He’ll let the private health sector cream off the easy work leaving the public health system struggling with the most complex and rare illnesses, then let the public system sink. No matter how wealthy and propertied you are if there’s no capacity/skill/facility to look after you and your complex illness you’ll end up worse off (or dead).
Yeah, and I guess he’ll stop all those privileged union members from negotiating better pay and conditions than non-union members. Privilege, it’s a terrible thing.
Its easy to be a rightwinger. Just get out the clubs and the guns and people will do what you want. It takes brains, thought, conscience and a sense of decency to run a social democratic state properly where everybody getsa fair shake.
randal,
It’s easy to be a rich, healthy, well-educated, highly-paid, born-to-money rightwinger in the first world.
It would kinda suck to be a rightwinger if you were chronically ill, or dyslexic, or trapped by your family’s poverty. I wonder why we don’t see many of them?
Just shows how arogant you lefties are that you think you need to instruct your followers how to vote.
Your problem steve is that the good people of Epsom are a tad sharper than your average labour sheep and will have worked it out long ago.
The way these righties keep bangin on about smart they is when it comes to the ‘lekshuns, you’d think they might’ve won one this century.
Saw and heard Roger Douglas the other night at the Court Theatre election debate in Christchurch.
Confirmed my opinion that it is wise to retire with some dignity and not come back .
It was embarrassing to see him being laughed at, by left and right, not for his ideology but his incoherence and inability to focus as he once used to.
Anderton is an alert youngster in comparison.
A sad mistake Rodney.
Completely off topic fact of the day:
The last presidential race won by the Republican party, without having either a Bush or a Nixon on the ticket was …
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Hoover/Curtis . 1928
h/t washingtonmonthly.
g’night.
I’m a Rimutaka voter. I think I’ll watch the polls until the last minute before deciding whether or not to vote Ron Mark. I’d love to vote how I want, for Chris Hipkins (Labour) and the Green Party, but ah, well, such is MMP.
How I’d relish a Parliament without NZ First though.
“It takes brains, thought, conscience and a sense of decency to run a social democratic state properly where everybody getsa fair shake.”
and the ever present threat of the state to confiscate your property and throw you in jail for not following its regulations and paying its taxes. Don’t anyone pretend that the state is anything other than the monopoly holder of legitimised violence. The argument is how much violence it should apply, and to whom, and what to do with the money it takes by force.
I find it particularly bizarre that so many want the state to do their caring for them, and think if it wasn’t taking taxes off them that they wouldn’t be bothered helping people who were worse off than themselves.
“I find it particularly bizarre that so many want the state to do their caring for them, and think if it wasn’t taking taxes off them that they wouldn’t be bothered helping people who were worse off than themselves.”
Liberty, now that you’ve finished reading Rand you should go and read up on distributed responsibility. I know what you mean, and yes, there ARE people like that, but the reason I like to “contract some of my caring out to the state” is that its vastly more efficient to do it that way than for my to pick pet projects to care about on a case by case basis. Not to mention fairer, more sustainable, and more equitable.
As for the states “monopoly on legitimised violence” – I wouldn’t get too excited about that tack considering you’re coming across like a classic libertarian at the moment and their stated utopia is basically “the state has no role other than to do violence in order to protect my property rights”. As for “anything other than”: you obviously mean “anything other than all public services, numerous as they are”. Libraries, hospitals, parks, roads, social welfare, environmental management, national reserves, civil defense….
Try not to be a retard.
Same goes for you actually Randal, you’ve been significantly worse to have around than the majority of the right leaning commentators on this site for some time now. What gives? Even if the left lose this election it doesn’t give you any right nor cause to decend into brainless extremist anti-capitalist hate-speech.
So Steve when will we see a Vote Smart: Mangere ?
The chance of the NZ Pacific Party (Taito Philip Field) lifting this ‘crown jewel’ seat are by all accounts quite high. What’s your guidance & wisdom on this one Steve ?
I’ve said before T-Rex, because I’ve often wondered it, that I think Randal is a right-winger pretending to be a left-wing troll. The most incriminating evidence was recently when he said something to the effect: “Piss off you right winger, this is a Labour Party site and we can write what we like”.
Even though I live in the electorate, I can’t verify Steve’s tip that “Hide’s support has suffered from his buffoonery and Worth could be in with a chance”. That’s because none of the many people I know who live here would ever vote for Hide in the first place. In fact, I think that there must be three degrees of separation between me and any Hide-voter.
But I, and everybody else I know here, will be voting for Richard Worth again, just in case it should be close. We don’t need Steve to alert us to this, but thanks.
Tim makes a very good point (two, if you include his assertion that Randal is a right-winger pretending to be a left-wing troll) when he says, “If you really wanted to advocate smart-voting, then the solution seems to be for Labour to make sure Winston’s 3% isn’t wasted.”
Right now, I know a lot of people who would normally vote Labour who are leaning Green. Ruling National out and Labour in was a smart move for the Greens. But it has been occurring to some of us that ensuring a left government might require getting NZ First over the 5% threshhold, however unsavoury the thought. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the polls say closer to the date. (And to think that Peters wanted to ban the polls that could yet save him.)
Trouble with all this strategic voting is that you don’t know enough about how others are going to vote so you could end up wasting your vote.
Better to just vote with you conscience – that way when it’s all over you can at least feel good in yourself no matter what you’ve done, rather than wake up to find Peter’s got 15% and you voted for him too!
Bill Brown: “Trouble with all this strategic voting is that you don’t know enough about how others are going to vote so you could end up wasting your vote.”
Umm, Bill, that’s why I said “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the polls say closer to the date.”
I’ve been really impressed with NZers’ capacity to vote tactically in previous elections, and can’t see things changing this time.
Even ignoring the fact that Rodney Hide is one of the few genuinely known quantities in NZ politics (in that he can be relied upon to stand on his principles), and is on that grounds less unworthy than most, this stratagem in this electorate is really a piss in the wind. Richard Worth isn’t campaigning to win the electorate seat – he’s campaigning to increase the party vote for National in Epsom, according to his statements to the Herald that “How people decide to cast their constituency vote is an issue for them.” With even the Nats voting for Rodney, the few lefties in that most leafy of electorates really just have the party vote.
L
This all sounds much more fun than my boring Ohariu electorate where that idiot Dunne wins it everytime. I wish we could strategically vote his ass outta here.
Hey Chris G – we’re in Ohariu too.
Another party could take that electorate with a good candidate who was prepared to put in some spade-work in the next three years. Dunne will likely win again but I’m hoping it’s his last…the idea of him as my electorate MP makes me ill.
Definitely voting Chauvel. Not that I would ever vote for a Nat MP (though in Epsom I would be tempted…) but Shanks can’t even pronounce Ohariu correctly!