Election Thoughts

On Saturday I voted in the New Zealand Elections. I was allowed to vote as a permanent resident. In Australia I would need to be a citizen.
As a citizen it would be compulsory to vote in Australia so turnout is about 95%. In New Zealand it is only compulsory (even for permanent residents) to enroll and so the turnout was less than 70%.  Of those, 48% voted for the party led by a man who was once head of a leading foreign bank in London. So much for the claims of the occupiers that it is 99% against the 1%. I wonder how many of them bothered to vote.

Of course the result was expected so I cannot be disappointed.

In Australia there is preferential voting so you need to number every square on the voting paper.  Most states and the Commonwealth have 2 houses of parliament so there are 2 voting papers. The upper houses vary but most have a complicated system of voting and the paper can be huge (often referred to as table cloths).

In New Zealand there was one A4 size paper requiring 2 ticks. One for the local member and one for the party vote. I voted for the local Labor member who was elected. (Dunedin votes different from much of the country usually electing 2 Labor members).
My party vote was Green and I was pleased to see their vote increased to 10% and there will be 13 members of parliament.

As in Australia, it is difficult for the smaller parties to win an electorate but in NZ the party vote allows them to gain members in the parliament close to the proportion of votes they gain across the country. In Australia the complex upper house voting usually achieves a similar result in the upper houses only.

There was a referendum to revert the NZ system back to First Pass the Post similar to UK and I think the USA. Thankfully it lost. Under FPP it is very difficult for smaller parties to be elected and I would see no point in voting in future as my preference is definitely Green party.

At least the result was known a few hours after the polls closed. In Australia it can take days before a definite result. There is haggling about forming a government. However the National Party only needs 2 more in order to control the house. These will be provided by 2 parties each with one member. One party (ACT) is even further to the Right.
We wait to see who the Maori party will support. They supported National in the last parliament but it is believed this lost them votes. They are strange bed fellows.

I must admit that when National were elected to Government 3 years ago, it was a point against my move to New Zealand. However, although I do not agree with many of their policies they are not as bad as the centre right party (Liberal/National)  that often dominates Australia politics.

Election

That got your attention :-) but no, it is not the US Presidential but the Local elections in the state of New South Wales which were held last Saturday.

The local councils are not very important in the scheme of things. They look after rubbish collection, footpaths and local roads, approve development unless it is important, in which case the State government takes control. The only education they provide are council libraries and some child care, the only health are baby health clinics and ensure cleanliness of food establishments.
They do not even have a place in our constitution and only exist if the State government allows. It is quite common for the State government to sack a council if there is a hint of corruption and put in administrators. Many of the councillors are just seeing their election as training for the bigger things although to be fair I guess a lot do see themselves as working for the community.

Anyway it provided me with my first day of paid work this calendar year. I work as an election official. Last year there was the State election in March and the National election in November. This year just the one and unless something unusual occurs there will be no work next year.

It is a long day as we start setting up just after 7am, the doors open at 8am and close at 6pm then we begin counting. The other elections with 2 houses to elect usually see us finishing after 10pm but the council elections are simpler so we were able to leave at 8pm. But I was still tired on Sunday.
For that reason, I have only just caught up with reading all the blogs. I do not know how those of you with full time jobs cope.

Our council is divided into 4 wards and the booth where I worked was the only one which took votes for all wards. It is on the border of wards 2 and 3 and someone made a monumental stuff up. The boundaries were changed since the last election and so there were 4 tables for ward 2 in which it was actually located and 1 table for each of the other wards. The officials moved around the tables to give us variety. When working on 1 and 4 it was a bit boring but Ward 3 (also with only one table) was flat out with a queue way out the door. Wards 1 and 4 had less than 50 votes all day, ward 2 (with 4 tables) took 2000 but ward 3 took 900. There were some very angry people.
Most of you will be surprised to learn that people did not just give up and go away. You see you cannot, unless you want to incur a $55 fine. Voting is compulsory in Australia. We could not increase the number of tables as we were only given one roll book to mark off.

We have to ask people if they have voted anywhere else in this election (it could be by post or at the pre-polls or at one of the other booths). I would like a dollar for everyone who tells me "once is enough". I feel like saying "Be thankful you live in a democracy and can vote" but instead I just smile and issue them with a vote after crossing their name off the list.

I am glad voting is compulsory as candidates do not have to 'get out the vote'. I believe most people do take it seriously knowing they have to attend. Some put in a blank vote, some do a 'donkey vote' (1,2,3,4 down the page) which give a very slight advantage to the person on the top (so there is a draw for ballot paper order). Some write rude words or even a rude essay which is only seen by those of us counting (plus scrutineers) and at that time of the night we could not care less and just put it on the informal pile. One man did screw his up and throw it in the bin but thankfully one of my co-workers noticed and retrieved it. Our books have to balance at the end of the night between votes issued and votes counted.

Our State Labor Government sort of imploded the week before the elections (new inexperienced Premier, lots of resignations and dummy spits) but does not have to face the electors until March 2010. Therefore many people took their annoyance out on the poor Labor local councillors. However in the Blue Mountains the gains were made by the Greens and in Ward 3, a group opposed to the building of a new chain supermarket in the main town rather than the main Liberal opposition.
Such fun and games but not very important in the world scheme of things. However am looking forward to the increase in my bank balance in a week or two.