Local Body Elections
The Dom Post reports:
A website designed to help boost the country’s low voter turnout figures for local body elections has gone live.
The website, elections2010.co.nz, is a one-stop shop that aims to equip voters with all the information they need to vote in October’s local body elections.
Just 44 per cent of eligible local body election voters cast ballots in 2007.
By keying their residential address into the website, voters are instantly told which council and ward they are eligible to vote in and which candidates are standing for council and mayor.
The site contains detailed profiles on each candidate, including information on their political leanings, conflicts of interest and five main issues.
There are also links to candidates’ Facebook and Twitter pages and pre-recorded video addresses, and voters can post questions to candidates online.
The site, developed by Local Government Online with backing from Local Government New Zealand, also details which other entities voters are eligible to vote for, including district health boards and various local trusts. It will contain information on thousands of candidates, trusts, councils and boards.
What a good initiative.
I stuck in the street I live on, and it listed the four elections I can vote in, and where they have been supplied, a link to a candidate’s page.
What would be good is to take this further, and actually allow people to cast their votes via the Internet. One could have a ballot paper with hyperlinks to candidate’s pages. That way people would gain far more info than the usual 200 word biography you get in the post.
Well done to LGNZ and LGO for creating this.
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:08 am
I agree, a great initiative, however, it does seem to be a little lacking. I looked in vain, but could find no details of candidates for Ecan.
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:39 am
This is the big worry with a lacklustre election but powerful body such as the shiny new Supercity. Someone gets elected by a bare majority (20 – 30 percent should do it) on a turnout of 40 percent of eligible voters. That’s not a mandate, that’s a rotten borough.
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:42 am
They need to get their arses into gear.
So far only two mayoral candidates for Auckland are listed and one of them is the fool from North Shore City.
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:46 am
The site requests I supply a “CMS” username and password.. whats that?
JC
August 2nd, 2010 at 10:59 am
Typed in for Wellington and apparently the only candidate for mayor is Celia Wade-Brown.
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:10 am
Nominations don’t close until 20 August, so I’d look on this site as a framework at the moment, it can’t be complete until all candidates are known.
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:50 am
I haven’t voted in loacl body elections for years. And that orange Mr Blobby treating us like kids isn’t going to change my mind.
August 2nd, 2010 at 11:59 am
The updating and infomation from the website is great idea. Hopefully it will encourage people to get out and vote. It is a real problem (the non vote) of democracy that so many are apathetic.
Sure I know it will be postal, but how is this scrutinized?
A further aspect is that people only vote when some thing is in it for them. Once they can figure that somebody can contribute to their wellbeing, regardless at some one’s else cost. That can cut both ways.
Postal votes and now talk of internet voting is only aligning it self to possible future voter fraud.
The old fashioned way of going to a voting booth, does ID and reduces the chance of fraud and coercion. It is a moment when some one can vote and nobody else is to know who they voted for. ! !
Sure it is costly, but what price is democracy?
It has to be done correctly.
How are these processes to be scrutinized?
Suspicions may be raised when rest homes, hospitals, prisons and other institutions may be block voting, more than encouraged by zealous supporters. How are we to know?
August 2nd, 2010 at 1:52 pm
“Who can I vote for?”
I suppose people who use “whom” aren’t going to be their target market?
August 2nd, 2010 at 2:40 pm
I almost had a small “Shane Jones in a motel moment” upon reading that, DPF
That model could easily be extended to national elections and then referenda, making them affordable to run and thus removing the politicians’ best excuse for denying people a say in their own democracy.
Well done LGNZ and LGO for showing the national electoral authorities what can be done.
Colonel Masters:
Then it should read “For whom can I vote?”. Perhaps they should try to narrow down visitors’ IP addresses… those from Auckland and other places who’ve forgotten the use of proper grammar get the dumbed-down version
August 2nd, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Checked mine and the information is non-existent. Sure I get told the wards, but the info on each of those wards is empty apart from Northern Ward and Mayor. There are no photo’s for either, and a bio for only Tim Sheppard.
Nice idea, but rubbish execution
August 2nd, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Only candidate listed is David Scott for Paraparaumu ward. And there’s no details on him. No Candidates listed for anything else (Mayor, Council at large, community board or health board).
Great Idea, but as noted above, Rubbish Execution.
The site should have been complete before launch. I am unlikely to check back.
August 2nd, 2010 at 6:00 pm
The site can’t be completed until they know who all the candidates will be.
August 5th, 2010 at 3:32 am
It’s up to candidates to add their own information, not Local Government Online. People who put in their nomination forms by AUgust 20th will get a basic entry but some of us have been early and proactive.
The more serious deficiency is the lack of information on the single transferable vote (STV) system of voting used for some Council elections and ALL Health Boards. In Wellington City, you can rank the candidates and if your first choice doesn’t get many votes, your second preference gets considered and so on until SOMEONE gets more than half the votes. In 2007 that took the current mayor nine rounds before she succeeded.
We can make a change by voting!