War is for Winning

Smartest Electorate in New Zealand

Maori voters who voted Maori Party for electorate and Labour for party are the smartest voters of all us Kiwis. They have maximised their voting power and helped ensure that New Zealand is now governed by Labour with support from the Maori Party. This advantage takes the form of the overhang MP.

NZ has a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) representative form of government, check it out. Basically we have a one chamber parliament where everybody gets two votes, a party vote and an electorate vote. In addition to this we have a race based set of Maori seats that are governed by the same rules, but consist only of Maori race voters who have consistently voted Labour (most of the last 70 years or so). These Maori seats are a separate, but equal part of the electoral system.

The first 120 seats are determined by the proportion of the party vote that a party obtains. In the last election the less intelligent voters (of which I am admittedly one) were captured by stupid parties that contested both the party vote and electoral vote. Within the smarter Maori electorates tens of thousands of more intelligent voters ticked Labour for their party vote. The proportionality of the first 120 seats was determined by the proportion of non-Maori and Maori voters party votes.

Beyond the 120 seats of the party proportional parliament exist potential electorate only seats that are not related to the proportionality, these are termed "overhang" seats. These are reserved for parties that have smart, intelligent voters who vote for them only as electorate MPs. In the previous parliament only the Maori Party did this. The votes of these Maori voters were 57%* more important in determining the government than other New Zealanders**.

There were 69 electoral seats in the previous 2005 elections (there will be 70 in the next elections). The potential power of intelligent voters grows larger.



* (69 potential seats / 120 proportional seats) x 100%

** People of Epsom who voted for Rodney Hide came second in the intelligence stakes, everybody else a distant third (and any Maori who voted Maori Party with party vote who also lean towards Labour were utter fools - do not do it again).


Inspired by kiwiblog.

posted by unaha-closp @ 11:41 PM