I didn’t start that way. In 1993, I was probably leaning towards Single Transferable Vote (STV) or even retaining First Past the Post (FPP). I did eventually vote for a change, and eventually for MMP. But that was largely due to the hysteria and types of the people who ran the campaign against MMP. Quite frankly I didn’t want to to associate myself with Peter Shirtcliffe and co, who in my opinion seemed to oppose a change for no more reason than it wasn’t going to be good for them and their interests.
However, over time, I’ve grown to appreciate the gradual progress and stability offered by MMP. It prevents both the conservative stasis of a Holyoake/Muldoon style government with the consequent flailing policies trying to resist change, and also the rabid and rapid change that is its consequence in later governments. The slowly changing fortunes of the various political parties causes change, because a government has to satisfy multiple coalition partners. Having to forge a government out of multiple coalition partners with quite different agendas forces the government to change policy relatively slowly and quite prudently by the political standards of when I grew up.
The more I look at FPP, Supplementary Member (SM), STV, and the like – the more I view them as being akin to having an elected dictatorship – as is currently being played out in the UK. The rigidities of the political bindings allow for stasis and rapid change. They aren’t suited for gradual change.
However, this weekend while I was looking around at the blogging on the UK election results, I saw that Peter Shirtcliffe was advertising at Kiwiblog. So I went to see how the Campaign for MMP was going, and to see what we could do on this site. Well bugger all – the campaign site has PDF’s a-plenty, but no resources for a blog site to scatter around..
Because I hate meetings ‘discussing’ what should be done, and in my usual unilateral style of getting something done… I made an overweight advert in 30 minutes out of their graphics and with a few opinions of my own and flung it into the public service advertisement area.
I figure that my fellow authors can only make me take it down. In the meantime it’d help all of you creative sloganeers and artists to focus and come up with something better (without a spelling error would help).
The Campaign for MMP appears to be operated with policy wonks with a fetish for PDFs and little thought about how to market their ideas in the internet age… For instance the wikipedia page hasn’t even got a link or reference in the body of the text to the Campaign for MMP’s website.
Lets fix some of those wee oversights by the Internet illiterates. There is no way that I want to have to go through voting with any of the alternatives to MMP in 2017 because it wasn’t marketed at the right audience – the generations that grew up with MMP as being the boring old norm. They tend to be suckers for the “it’s time for a change message”.
From Wikipedia the process and questions are going to be…
2011 referendum
At the 2011 general election, the first referendum will be held, asking two questions. The first question will ask whether to retain or abolish the MMP voting system. The second will ask which voting method (other than MMP) would be preferred. The options available are the methods the Royal Commission on the Electoral System recommended for further scrutiny in 1986 and the voters voted on in 1992.
Voters can choose to answer one or both questions.
Question
The proposed questions are:
Part A Should the current MMP voting system be retained?
* I vote to retain the MMP voting system
* I vote to change to another voting system.Part B Regardless of how you voted under part A, if there was a change to another voting system, which voting system would you choose?
* I would choose the First Past the Post system.
* I would choose the Preferential Voting system.
* I would choose the Single Transferable Vote system.
* I would choose the Supplementary Member system.[8]2014 referendum
If the voters reject MMP in 2011, another referendum would be held at the 2014 general election to decide between MMP and the alternative voting system which received the most votes in the second question in 2011. This means that the 2017 general election may be held under a different voting system.
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