At 04:45 PM 1/30/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Victor Milne:
>
>>As I recall, this thread got started with a comment about many of the
>voters
>>seeming to be neither intelligent nor well-informed. I'm sure from many of
>>his postings that Ed Weick did not mean this in an elitist sense.
>
>
>No, I didn't mean it in an elitist sense. I meant it very much in the sense
>of your posting. What often adds complexity to voter decision-making is the
>choice between the candidate and the party. I've been faced with this on
>more than one occasion. I wanted to vote for a party but I simply couldn't
>stomach the candidate it was running. On one occasion I did not feel any of
>the candidates were worthy of my vote so I spoiled my ballet.
>
Yes, I will agree the issue of voter decision making is a difficult one.
New Zealand had its first MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) election at the
end of 1996. They attempted to get over the problem of people voting for a
Party when the candidate selected for that people was absolutely useless
(in many voters opinions), by giving voters two votes. One vote goes to an
electorate candidate while the other goes to The Party of the voters
choice. It is The Party Vote which determines the composition of the new
parliament.
Sounds all very nice and tidy but the system is not perfect, mainly for two
reasons:-
1) Tactical voting - eg. when you vote for a minor party because of
promises made before the election which specify a certain course of action
after the election. This happened in New Zealand when the minor party did
the exact opposite of what they said they were going to do.
So tactical voting does not always work.
2) The other major problem concerns Party allegiances. The parliament
New Zealand has now is nothing like the one that was voted for at the end
of 1996. In the last two years nine parliamentarians have either 'jumped
ship' to other parties or declared themselves 'independent' (not really
independent since are pledged to support the minority government on
confidence issues). An attempt was made to address that problem by
introducing a members Bill compelling members who 'jumped ship' to resign
from parliament but was defeated.
I would be interested to hear if you have any further thoughts on how the
issue of Voter Choice might be improved.
Cheers
Ross
