The problem with referendum spending caps
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:00 am by David FarrarThe Herald reports:
Campaign members had gone through submissions to the committee and found that 80 per cent recommended spending caps.
The current bill contains no limit on advertising spending for the referendum. Dr Grey suggested a cap of $350,000.
“We don’t think freedom of speech is about allowing everyone freedom to spend on advertising and to spend freely on advertising.”
Challenged on how a spending cap could be administered, she said it would be best for it to apply to campaigning for each option: Mixed-Member Proportional, First Past the Post, Preferential Voting, Single Transferable Vote and Supplementary Member.
She conceded it would be much harder to have a cap of $350,000 per group or individual, as a group could simply splinter into smaller groups if it wanted to spend more.
A spending cap on each option would be a horrendous breach of the right of freedom to speech.
Let us say you wish to spend $500 in your local newspaper promoting STV. But alas the “Campaign for STV” groups has already spent $350,000 on promoting STV. That means that even though you have nothing to do with that group, their spending means you are banned from being able to spend any money promoting your views.
If you go the other option, of a spending cap per group – then it is trivial to get around it through said splintering.
I wish people would devote more energy to the pros and cons of the various options, that the spending cap debate. As it happens, I suspect there will be very little spent by any third party as the Internet will be a major source of information and debate this time around – unlike in 1993 when you had to spend lots of money to get your view heard.
Related posts:
- Electoral Referendum Bill Report
- 2008 Spending and Votes
- Greens trying to buy a referendum
- Union spending in the campaign
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:05 am
How is the value of time measured? If people volunteer to campaign, is their income over their campaign involvement included? All nonsense. No spending cap.
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 11:15 am
kk – voluntary work is counted as what it would cost to pay someone to do that same work at reasonable rates.
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 11:17 am
So if you were loaded and willing to spend 700K against STV the best strategy would be
(1) spend $350k on really good ads against STV
(2) spend $350k on really mediocre ads for STV (thus denying anyone else a shot).
/Machiavellian I admit…
[DPF: Yes that thought has occurred to me]
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 11:20 am
spending cap on each option would be a horrendous breach of the right of freedom to speech.
Do you think , then, that council candidates should have spending caps lifted when campaigning for council for the October local body elections? ( yes there are differences, but just sayin’… )
[DPF: You are not understanding what I am saying. I am saying that if you have a cap for an option, then it may restrict an individual from spending any money at all promoting their views. That is different to candidate spending caps]
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 11:20 am
Are we having another referrendum on MMP?
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 11:22 am
The cap per option could be fun. Someone could use up all the Pro – MMP cap buy putting up what they claimed was a campaign showcasing the fine parliamentarians MMP has given us, but in reality by showcasing a bunch of the unelectable fruitcakes and carpetbaggers that got in that way, and you’d have an awesome campaign against it without using up your own cap.
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 11:33 am
1. I do think freedom of speech means being able to spend you own money, as much as you want, on advertising.
2. I also think they are trying to fix a problem that does not exist by imposing spending limits at all.
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 11:39 am
The desire to prevent a result distorted by a massive imbalance in spending is fair enough. It is clear that the massive spending by the anti-MMP camp in 1993 had a huge effect (though not quite enough to swing the result). The principle of spending caps is also embedded in election laws.
But DPF is right that there are some major challenges in devising any fair method of spending caps for the electoral referendum – and one of those challenges is that while a political party is the definitive spokesperson for their candidates, you cannot really have a definitive spokesperson for an idea. It may be that no cap is possible without creating a worse injustice.
It would be helpful to try and come up with a way of squaring the circle though. One option might be to ensure that the official information campaign actually presents the real arguments rather than just sanitised pap so emptied of anything controversial that it just confused people (as happened in 1993).
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 11:43 am
No it isn’t.
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 11:45 am
You can spend all you like it won’t change the system away from MMP..
There’s five way’s to spend $350.000 on MMP.
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 11:49 am
You could of course argue that there’s a bigger freedom to be protected here, and that’s the right of citizen’s to receive fair and balanced volumes of information on which to base their voting decisions…
And as imperfect as electoral/voting regs can be be, the intent must be clear – voters came first…
this is about wee pete shirtycliff’s precedent right??
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Spending caps are essential to electoral fairness. If one side misinforms the public, and spending is roughly equal, the other side can correct them. If one side spends an order of magnitude more, they just need to repeat the misinformation enough and the other side has no chance of responding.
It is fair that coverage of a particular viewpoint is roughly proportional to the number of natural people who support that view and want it promoted – as an example, if a fringe group of 0.1% of the population who care enough to contribute to a campaign wants a particular outcome, and 99.9% want another, it would be unfair to try to ensure both groups got equal coverage.
The purpose of a spending cap is therefore to ensure that wealthy special interest groups do not buy advertising disproportionate to their numbers. The ideal system, if we were to only consider fairness, would be to give each natural person one infinitely divisible ‘credit’ they can either use personally, or give (some or all of) to any organisation they are a financial member of. Each credit would give the holder a right to spend up to a certain amount on advertising.
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Obviously, with the above proposal, there would need to be a mechanism to ensure that it wasn’t legal to ‘buy up’ credits in exchange for money – probably not that hard; it isn’t really any different to the situation with votes.
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 1:12 pm
“Spending caps” and “democracy” do not belong in the same sentence, even more so when you have a parliament who are hell bent on retaining the highly undemocratic MMP system.
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 1:40 pm
RKBee predicts:
You may well be right, because I imagine the campaigns will very earnestly talk about proportionality etc etc, throw figures around, talk about “the Sainte-Laguë method” (which sounds like a form of Catholic-approved contraception) and bore the arse off everybody who, rather than do the hard work of thinking about things for an hour, will choose the devil they know.
But I sincerely hope you’re wrong. And I suspect the best way of winning the debate, getting rid of MMP and replacing it with a proportional system in which every MP was directly elected (and thus directly accountable) is that suggested by Put it away:
If someone (or some people) wanted to buy the air time / column centimetres for such a campaign I’d happily donate the production facilities and creatives to make it happen. A procession of past and present dropkicks paraded across the screen would be enough to swing the issue, I suspect. Personally I’d start with this pic and a caption saying “here’s what a typical List MP thinks of the position to which you elected him”.
Incidentally, does anyone know much about the book “Superseding MMP : real electoral reform for New Zealand” by Luke Malpass and Oliver Marc Hartwich? It’s published in Australia but so far I haven’t been able to lay my hands on a copy.
Vote:July 23rd, 2010 at 2:00 pm
“If you go the other option, of a spending cap per group – then it is trivial to get around it through said splintering.”
Depends what you mean by “trivial”. You can build in prohibitions on collaborating to evade spending limits, such as are contained in the current Electoral (Finance Reform and Advance Voting Bill), cl. 204E:
204E Offence to avoid limit set out in section 204B(1)(d)
(1) An unregistered promoter may not enter into an agreement, or enter into an arrangement or understanding, with any other person for the purpose of circumventing the maximum amount prescribed in section 204B(1)(d).
(2) A body corporate or unincorporated may not split itself into 2 or more bodies for the purpose of circumventing the maximum amount prescribed in section 204B(1)(d).
(3) Every person who wilfully contravenes subsection (1) or (2) commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding $40,000
Of course, two individuals (or two groups) that agree to work independently on pro/anti-MMP advertising would not trigger this provision … but that’s to the good (they each get to have their separate say, plus the lack of coordination will mean a diversity of views on the issue instead of a monolithic ad campaign that hammers one message incessantly).
Vote: