Voter turnout and systems
The Dominion Post has the inevitable story into the low voter turnout and delays.
It is quite unacceptable that some results took over 48 hours. There is something wrong when we have the results of the Australian election before the Wellington City Council, despite WCC closing at least 9 hours earlier. I suppose we should be grateful that we got the results at least before the Afghanistan results.
In hindsight the use of STV was a mistake. Now don’t get me wrong I think STV would be a good system for national politics, but is seems totally unsuitable for local body elections.
In national politics, most of the voters will have followed enough news to be able to have a fairly well formed view on which party and candidate they like, and those they do not.
But in local body politics, most candidates are invisible, and voting is almost all based on name recognition. I would estimate less than 5% actually vote based on detailed knowledge of the merits of various candidates.
Now FPP works well for local body, as all voters have to do is tick (for example) up to five people that they have vaguely warm feelings about. But if you then ask them to rank those five people in order, most have no idea, and hence it puts them voting. I have had several people tell me they got put off by the need to rank candidates.
STV seems to be a good example of great in theory but awful in practice.
I actually would vote for STV over FPP for national elections. But for local body elections, it should be dumped.
October 11th, 2004 at 7:12 am
I completely agree. It’s an absolute disgrace that we don’t know who won an election for 48 hours after the voting closes.
As you say, STV is a lousy system if you don’t know much about the candidates. Its also unsuited for elections where you have multiple candidates on a ticket. It’s fine if you make the choice ranking a single candidate from each party, but its a bit messy to rank several candidates on the same ticket. In this sense, its wholly unsuited for local body elections.
October 11th, 2004 at 8:52 am
Agreed,I found once I got up to about 3 that I had lost interest. How on Earth is one meant to rank 24 candidates, I imagine that the first candidates on the ticket had an advantage.
Also I had to give up on this line; “would estimate less than 5% actually voteem off voting. based on detailed knowledge… ”
Something about 5% voting based on their knowledge of the candidate but …
October 11th, 2004 at 9:33 am
I’d say that STV (which is essentially preferential voting) is good for a mayoral race, but problems do arise when you use it for really large electorates/wards like we have in DHB elections.
Perhaps someone here will be able to explain to me, however, what Nick Smith meant [in his several PRs on the subject] when he said things like:
“”The confusing mix of STV, FPP and MMP-style voting introduced into local elections by Labour has proven to be a dismal failure,” says National
October 11th, 2004 at 9:34 am
I’d say that STV (which is essentially preferential voting) is good for a mayoral race, but problems do arise when you use it for really large electorates/wards like we have in DHB elections.
Perhaps someone here will be able to explain to me, however, what Nick Smith meant [in his several PRs on the subject] when he said things like:
“”The confusing mix of STV, FPP and MMP-style voting introduced into local elections by Labour has proven to be a dismal failure,” says National
October 11th, 2004 at 10:07 am
Yep STV would be okay for mayoralty, but there is a risk of having one voting system for mayors and one for councils.
STV works in the Senate in Australia because you have party tickets which allow you to just select the ticket, and your preferences get allocated as the party you rank first decides. Without party politics at local body level it is a bad fit here.
I have been curious about the MMP-style voting system also, and not sure what Nick is referring to.
October 11th, 2004 at 2:01 pm
STV isn’t that bad. There is no evidence that turnouts have been worse in STV local bodies than FPP. NZ system is different from Australia – you don’t have to rank every candidate. If your ward returns three candidates, there are party (or other groups) contesting the elections and you know nothing about the individual candidates but prefer (say) CitRat then you can randomly allocate 1, 2 and 3 to the three CitRat candidates just as easily as you could have ticked them under FPP. If you know nothing about the individual candidates and there aren’t any parties you shouldn’t vote (under any system).
The counting time is easily corrected (either more resources or some mix of electronic and postal voting) but doesn’t really matter. It’s much more important to get the right candidate elected even if it takes and extra day or two.
October 11th, 2004 at 4:22 pm
I agree STV is good for a mayoral race in the cities, but not so good for the rest of local body elections, particularly as the dandidates dont say much about themselves. As a system it is better and fairer than FPP, and with a bit if education, could be used to replace MMP. But dont blame late results on the electoral system, blame it on disorganisation and bad planning within an unfamiliar system.
October 11th, 2004 at 4:45 pm
I am not going to vote again.Kapiti keeps returning the same old people time and time again despite the most incredible and expensive cockups in water and suarage. They are returned on name recognition nothing else. Their mentality is cost plus monument building and gravy train. We need a system where candidates for Mayor(city manager) tender for the job, are bulk funded,and select and pay their own assistants…no elected councillors
October 12th, 2004 at 8:19 am
Greyshade – I disagree. With ccdhb there are eleven vacancies. It is a lot easier to find 11 people to tick than it is to work out your preferred order for those 11 people (let alone all 40).
STV is a very bad fit for elections where one doesn’t form strong preferences between candidates.
October 12th, 2004 at 10:20 am
STV blows. there is nothing wrong with FFP. Everybody understands it. The rukes are simple. It’s easily counted, giving timely less expensive results.
Voter turn-out was poor because people got fed up trying decifer what each candidate stood for, and then ranking 40 of the fools was a total waste of time
October 12th, 2004 at 10:20 am
STV blows. there is nothing wrong with FFP. Everybody understands it. The rules are simple. It’s easily counted, giving timely less expensive results.
Voter turn-out was poor because people got fed up trying decifer what each candidate stood for, and then ranking 40 of the fools was a total waste of time
October 12th, 2004 at 10:41 am
It may be easier to tick 11 candidates out of 40 then rank them 1 to 11 but you don’t have to agonise over the preferences unless you want to. Simply numbering the 11 preferred candidates in the order you come to them (or reverse order if you want to avoid bias) achieves much the same thing as an FPP vote for the 11 candidates. In practice you probably don’t have 11 preferred candidates – it’s just as likely to be 10 or 12 (unless you’re following a strict party slate) and you might do something like
(1) rank your top three preferences 1 to 3
(2) rank the remaining nine (or however many) candidates sequentially or randomly from 4 to 12.
(3) leave the rest blank.
Obviously the mechanics can be simpler and far more elegant with electronic voting.
October 12th, 2004 at 10:59 am
BTW I also think that 11 members from a single list is too many and we shouldn’t have DHBs in he first place. With the population of Sydney we’d be more efficiently and much more accountably served by a single authority.
October 12th, 2004 at 1:22 pm
David –
Well, you do have a point but no electoral system will satisfy when 1) nobody bothers to campaign, 2) those who do make Parekura Horomia sound like a fount of Churcillian eloquence and Hemmingway-esque clarity, and, 3) a large chunk of the electorate don’t bother because they’re convinced political aspirations are proof of advanced psychosis. In North Shore City (turnout about 35%) there were no candidate meetings in my ward, no voter information and zero candidates doorknocking or lurking around malls.
As for DHBs, I’m sure even the members know they have no real power and no real purpose except to carry the can for everyone else.
October 13th, 2004 at 11:49 am
STV is a quite bad fit for most local body politics, because most voters know too little about the issues and candidates to sensibly rank them – ticking them is work enough for most. The advertising campaign publicising it was awful, too, failing to emphasize the important fact that you don’t have to rank everybody.
But it’s also a bad fit for national elections, because it involves the ranking of candidates, sometimes representing the same party. This doesn’t reflect the reality of New Zealand politics, where party is everything and MPs vote with their party, not their personal beliefs, on almost every issue. So if people don’t care who their local councillor is, how will they care who their local MP is? Why should I care about the choice between Labour candidate A and Labour candidate B?
The only forum in New Zealand where STV makes sense to me is mayoral elections. I’m sure many Aucklanders who wanted John Banks out but weren’t sure about Hubbard would have liked the opportunity to rank Fletcher first and Hubbard second ‘just in case’, but had to vote tactically for Hubbard because of the nature of FPP. But, of course, when there’s only one vacancy to fill the system isn’t really STV, but rather PV (Preferential Voting).
So STV, while it has definite merit in the abstract, seems like a bad fit for New Zealand politics, national and local, to me.
October 13th, 2004 at 11:50 am
STV is a quite bad fit for most local body politics, because most voters know too little about the issues and candidates to sensibly rank them – ticking them is work enough for most. The advertising campaign publicising it was awful, too, failing to emphasize the important fact that you don’t have to rank everybody.
But it’s also a bad fit for national elections, because it involves the ranking of candidates, sometimes representing the same party. This doesn’t reflect the reality of New Zealand politics, where party is everything and MPs vote with their party, not their personal beliefs, on almost every issue. So if people don’t care who their local councillor is, how will they care who their local MP is? Why should I care about the choice between Labour candidate A and Labour candidate B?
The only forum in New Zealand where STV makes sense to me is mayoral elections. I’m sure many Aucklanders who wanted John Banks out but weren’t sure about Hubbard would have liked the opportunity to rank Fletcher first and Hubbard second ‘just in case’, but had to vote tactically for Hubbard because of the nature of FPP. But, of course, when there’s only one vacancy to fill the system isn’t really STV, but rather PV (Preferential Voting).
So STV, while it has definite merit in the abstract, seems like a bad fit for New Zealand politics, national and local, to me.
October 13th, 2004 at 3:16 pm
There are some major difference between STV in Australian federal elections, and STV in NZ local government elections:
1) Voting is compalsary in Australia (although this gives rise to donkey voting).
2) Parties are able to campaign while polls are open. They hand out leaflets on the day, stating exactly how to vote for a specific party, ranking all the candidates.
October 13th, 2004 at 3:18 pm
There are some major difference between STV in Australian federal elections, and STV in NZ local government elections:
1) Voting is compalsary in Australia (although this gives rise to donkey voting).
2) Parties are able to campaign while polls are open. They hand out leaflets on the day, stating exactly how to vote for a specific party, ranking all the candidates.
October 13th, 2004 at 3:18 pm
There are some major difference between STV in Australian federal elections, and STV in NZ local government elections:
1) Voting is compalsary in Australia (although this gives rise to donkey voting).
2) Parties are able to campaign while polls are open. They hand out leaflets on the day, stating exactly how to vote for a specific party, ranking all the candidates.
October 17th, 2004 at 2:47 pm
STV is used very successfully in Tasmania, the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Malta, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at local elections in those places. It will be used to elect all local councils in Scotland, as from May 2007.
STV is a candidate-based, rather than a party-based, system of proportional representation. As such, it is perfect for local body elections in NZ.
Under NZ STV, you only need rank-order as many, or as few, candidates as you like; couldn’t be more simple.
FPP may be easy, but too many votes are wasted – 60-70% do not contribute to the election of a candidate (i.e. votes given for unsuccessful candidates, plus the majorities of successful candidates). In the DHB elections, only 12.5% of votes cast did not contribute to the election of a candidate.
See Rod Donald’s defence of STV at Scoop.
October 17th, 2004 at 6:16 pm
Stephen – you seem to be arguing that in theory this is a perfect system, ignoring the reality. I know beign with the ERC you have to toe the party line, but it would be more credible to face up to teh defects.
I like STV in many circumstanes. I have got it implemented in organisations I am involved in. I would quite liek it for national elections.
But it is hopeless for multi vacancy elections like health boards, where the level of knowledge of candidates is so low. Dozens of people have said they don’t mind ticking a dozen people, but ranking them in order is just totally artifical.
Except for a few academics, people do not care that they may vote for candidates who lose, and hence their vote is wasted. They do care about having a voting system which allows them to vote easily.
October 17th, 2004 at 8:38 pm
The reality is that STV is brand new for NZers.
FPP and STV elections should have been on separate sheets of paper, and clearly identified. (In the FPP councils, the DHB election was headed up in the name of the city or district council it was associated with, then, in smaller type, the name of the DHB (for printing, and cost, reasons). How crazy was that?)
David, you appear to be saying NZers are dumber than Aussies and the Irish. I can’t accept that.
In NZ STV elections, people need only rank (some or all of) the candidates they have heard of, and ignore the rest. As votes drop out of the election, the quota is recalculated downwards to compensate. Ranking a few candidates, even only two or three, is far less artificial than blindly and thoughtlessly slapping a tick beside their names.
But I’m glad you like STV generally. Now that I’ve discovered you, I’ll keep working on you .
October 17th, 2004 at 8:56 pm
I agree it would be better to have the two voting systems on different sheets. But that has never been my complaint.
And it is nothing to do with intelligence. In NZ local body elections are based 95% on name recognition, not on preferences or satisfaction. In other countries this can vary as local government controls health and education, and is more political.
A preferential system is a bad fit for name recognition voting. It is okay for Mayors but bad for Councils and Health Boards.
The problem is not that STV is a bad system. But that local body voting is mainly done on name recognition.
If you wish to support me in my campaign to replace MMP with STV, that will be welcome!
October 17th, 2004 at 9:41 pm
If the blunt and crude multiple-FPP system (which results in unrepresentative councils) has encouraged NZers to vote by nothing more than name recognition, then it’s time STV was used for all local elections.
But what is stopping people from rank-ordering a few people whose names they recognise? They do it easily enough in Tasmania, where there are no party labels in local elections. I recognised four of the six candidates’ names in my ward, and easily ranked those four candidates.
I don’t think we’re too far apart, David. People just need two or three election cycles to get used to the new system.
Please e-mail me privately about your campaign. I’d like to read your ideas.
November 21st, 2004 at 10:25 pm
STV finds wrong winners. Here is a defect that no good preferential would exhibit. A large FPTP/FPP support rise for candidate ‘A’ causes that candidate to lose.
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|Winner: