Universal Suffrage Tino rangatiratanga to save NZ Democracy: In defence of 16 year olds + prisoners voting, limiting migrant voters and restricting political donations

The Blogfather, Dr Bryce Edwards, was righteously damning of the recent review into NZ democracy for its genuine lack of a coherent philosophical structure, but with all due respect to the Blogfather, this is the land of the wrong uptight crowd and coherent philosophical structures are far and few between.

I think we need an urgent upgrade of our universal suffrage with a focus on Tino rangatiratanga to save NZ democracy.

The breakdown of social cohesion, social media hate algorithms and distrust in institutions are all driving a disconnect from politics and attempts to overthrow procedural democratic systems to implement conspiracy theories or woke dogma demands.

We need a host of reforms for our Democracy that builds back support of the process while opening up the ability for people to engage in the democratic system that strengthens it for the real challenges we are going to have to agree on as

Lowering voting age to 16: People who argue 16 year olds don’t have the frontal lobe development to vote are the very same fuckwits who scream Police have every right to chase those very same teenagers to death during car chases. A car chase is a heat of the moment reaction that frontal lobes are impacted by, standing ate a ballot booth and voting is not the same issue. 16 year olds should vote, their concerns about the climate future they are inheriting from a complacent and apathetic older electorate has every right to be challenged. If you are old enough to fuck consensually, you are old enough to vote.

Allowing all prisoners to vote: Prisoners are the weakest members of our society because the State controls every element of their life while in prison. The constant drive by voters for crueller and harsher sentences needs a counter weight in the ability for Prisoners to vote. You don’t lose your rights as a citizen or permanent resident when in prison and seeing as Prisoners face the brunt of voter anger when determining the living conditions inside those prisons, they deserve the right to vote and help build some relationship between them and the wider society.

Limiting voting to Citizens and permanent residents: Migrant workers are exploited mercilessly in NZ and our reliance on huge migrant populations to prop up our low wage economy means we have huge easily manipulated migrant worker populations always inside NZ and their ease of voting means the domestic electorate can quickly resent the power imbalance created by allowing them to vote. The Independent Electoral Review are arguing that limiting voters rights to Citizens and Permanent Residents would build trust back into the electoral process, a position migrants in NZ are very angry about. Requiring migrants to live in NZ for at least one voting cycle NZ b before gaining the right to vote is the least we can do seeing as NZ is one of the few countries in the world that allows people who are not citizens to vote. One might argue that for real Universal Suffrage Tino rangatiratanga we would limit voting to rights to only citizens and permanent residents. This is not expanded to refugees who gain all permanent resident and citizenship rights

Amnesty on overstayers: If we were to limit voting rights to only citizens and permanent residents we would need to give all existing overstayers a one off amnesty that bestows permanent residency status plus voting rights.

Donation limited to voters not corporations: Limiting donations, expanding state funding and only allowing citizens and permanent residents to donate rather than allowing Unions and corporations to donate is righteous. We need tone kinder to individuals and crueller to corporations. Get corporate money out of politics

3.5% MMP threshold: MMP has been a failure in terms of creating new political voices to challenge the engrained interests and that is due in part to the high requirements of 5%. A 3.5% threshold would create a reasonable level that would enable more representation which is crucial when you look at the wide range off buy in required for the big challenges we face.

In short, NZ Democracy is sick and ripe for a level of corruption that ruptures and mutates into something dangerous. These changes are no silver bullet but they do create buy ins and can alleviate  some of the social fiction that risks tearing the fabric of society asunder.

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