OLIVER HARTWICH: Helen Clark is right
On Saturday, 706,680 New Zealanders gave National their party vote. Collectively, all of those votes amounted to nothing. Not a single National MP will enter Parliament from the list.
National won 42 electorates, but its party vote entitled it to only 35 seats. Since it keeps all 42, no National list candidate gets in. That is why the Finance Minister, the Attorney-General, the Defence Minister and the Speaker are out of Parliament.
Helen Clark told news agency AAP that observers could well judge this a flawed election. The outcome, she said, 'is not what MMP was designed to deliver'. She wants a full review.
She is right.
Without the eleven overhang seats, the House would be split 60 to 60, leaving Opportunity a choice between a centre-right government and a hung parliament. With them, the coalition holds 67 seats to 64.
Clark said the system had been 'gamed' but left out who started it: Te Pāti Māori, which urged supporters to back its electorate candidates and give their party votes to Labour or the Greens. It won five seats on 0.57 percent. Four are overhang seats.
Some on the right responded in kind. Don Brash and Harry Mowbray urged National voters to party vote ACT or New Zealand First. National opposed the move.
National's slump probably mattered more. Either way, the right got seven overhang seats and the left gained four.
Vote splitting is within the rules. The law invites political operators to exploit this democratic loophole.
My native Germany has been here before. In 2012, the Constitutional Court ruled that more than about 15 overhang seats breached the equality of the vote.
Here, only Parliament can repair the rules. It could give other parties levelling seats, as Germany did until its Bundestag passed 730 members, or deny seats to electorate winners whose party vote does not cover them, as Germany now does. It could add list seats to make overhangs rarer. Or it could give voters one vote for candidate and party alike.
Electoral reform is difficult and, with the coalition owing its provisional majority to the overhang, could easily turn party political. It would also clog a busy Parliament.
Clark's review should go to a one-year Royal Commission, with a referendum on its recommendations before the next election.
That is fast by New Zealand standards. But unless the rules change before 2029, this election's overhang will become a lasting democratic hangover.
Oliver Hartwich is Executive Director at The New Zealand Initiative
New Zealand is one of the world’s oldest democracies. And that term denotes an elected representative government, where geographical groups appoint a trusted individual to ponder and vote on the many laws/regulations that govern their lives.
The notion of electing political parties instead of identifiable individuals is a very new idea. John Locke would be mystified by it. None of the philosophers who have shaped our political heritage have ever given a thought to the 21st-century media view that representatives should be selected in secret by party elites rather than by voters.
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But must be careful. British negotiators in 1921 talks with the Irish got the new ‘Free’ Irish government shooting other Irish.
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National will want maximal say in any new Coalition of the centre right. 42 out of 67 MPs, should that be the result, will ensure it does.
However.
The decision at a high ( controlling faction) level to counsel people not to split their vote means that this faction miscalculated. It can be argued that they were too clever by half and assumed Nat voters would know what to do, and the Nat voters failed them.
Or, the controlling faction are dumb.
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If you stop TPM from taking their seats you’ll have a war every election
Abolish the Māori seats by referendum there will be one.big fight and then it’s finished
Hartwich is not right.
Quoting Germany, a country that has spent centuries invading others, has been either friend or foe of many countries depending on what day it is, has invaded many of its neighbours, has been ruled by despotic, authoritarian leaders, slaughtered millions, including 20 million Russians and 9 million Jews ( just in the Second World War and millions of others all over Europe and the Middle East and Britain), killed many Kiwi servicemen and merchant sailors and is currently driving its Nazi policies in Ukraine, aided by the equally corrupt Nato, is an affront to all Kiwis who have the right to vote under our legislation.
Why would we take any notice or attach any credence to…