MEDIAWATCH: Is this the worst ever political journalism Stuff has ever produced?

To be fair, I suppose it was my fault.

My fault for thinking for even a millisecond that Stuff could produce a coherent political column that wasn’t written by Luke Malpas, Andrea Vance, Donna Miles or Damien Grant.

My fault for thinking Glenn McConnell had the intellectual stamina to write about why we had such low voter turnout.

Read this inane bullshit…

Just 15% of Auckland voted for new mayor. How do we resuscitate local democracy?

Democracy is often criticised as “the tyranny of the majority”, but in local government that couldn’t be further from the truth. More often than not at the council level, democracy is the will of the minority.

In our largest and least-engaged city, a new mayor was elected having won the support of 15% of Aucklanders. He had a compelling lead over his nearest rival, Efeso Collins, who had just 10% of eligible voters give him their support.

The overwhelming majority of Aucklanders, at 65%, voted for no-one.

The remaining 10% supported one of the 21 candidates who weren’t Collins or Brown, and because Auckland operates on a First Past the Post electoral system their votes were effectively wasted.

Senior politics lecturer Dr Lara Greaves, from the University of Auckland, says a number of issues are at play – including disillusionment with local government, a wearing of the postal system, and issues of civic education. All these niche issues build up, she says, to have just 35% of a city vote.

“It’s sad, because local democracy could be great. But it just isn’t,” Greaves says.

“And it’s like, we’re probably going to talk about this for a week or two, be rightfully concerned about it, and then we’re not going to talk about it again until the next election.”

Decreasing voter turnout has been a trend for over a decade, although some had hoped the tide could be turned in Auckland thanks to a close competition between two very different candidates.

In Collins, there was a Gen X candidate from South Auckland who campaigned on climate change and social equity issues. On the other side, there was wealthy boomer Brown, who campaigned on cutting costs and getting better results from council-controlled organisations.

Brown said he respected Collins, and saw their difference as a classic political divide.

While Brown was concerned with rates bills hitting poorer households, he said Collins focused on ensuring poorer households could get more money.

If Collins won, he would also have been the super city’s first Pasifika mayor.

In South Auckland especially, Pasifika make up a great part of the communities and culture of the region.

In Māngere and Ōtāhuhu, Auckland Council estimates about 60% of the population is Pasifika.

But South Auckland also had the lowest turnout at this year’s election. In Ōtara and Papatoetoe, fewer than one in four people voted. And in Māngere and Ōtāhuhu, just 25% voted. Similarly, in Manurewa and Papakura the turnout was below 30%.

More than double the number of Waiheke Islanders voted, with more than half having a say, than residents of Ōtara, where turnout was just 21%.

Casey Makiri​, the head of the student council at the Manukau Institute of Technology, says student organisers worked hard to try and encourage voting. They hosted candidates on their campuses in Ōtara and Manukau, but visibility wasn’t the only issue.

She said students including herself had encountered issues voting. As well as hosting the candidates, they had an Auckland Council elections team on site to help enrol students – but many students also wanted to vote in-person. Makiri​ was one of those students, but she was told it would be better to vote by post. Sadly, as life and assignments got in the way, she was one of the many students who didn’t get another chance to post their ballots.

With general elections, she said voting was “a family event” where everyone could go to the polling stations as a group, and she wanted to know why local elections couldn’t offer that same opportunity.

There was also an issue with students and renters being able to vote.

She said many people didn’t receive their voting papers and candidate information, and therefore didn’t vote, because they move house often.

“There were a lot of different things that got in the way. I know many students did not receive voting papers,” she said.

While there were options to submit special votes or find ways around these barriers, time was of the essence.

Makiri​ says many people, students especially and those with lives too busy to worry about operations at the Ports of Auckland and ATEED, don’t see how the council has any major impact on their lives. Central government, which gets an 80% turnout, is far better understood, she says.

Caeden Tipler​, a 17-year-old campaigner wanting to lower the voting age, says it’s ironic that high schoolers – who are often very involved in their communities – are unable to vote. They​ say lowering the voting age would be an easy way to increase civic engagement, while teenagers are still in the communities they grew up in. Young adults, having often moved towns and left home, are less likely to have time to learn about the issues, they say.

Greaves says there are many issues stopping engagement, but it’s concerning to see local government becoming the domain of people with the luxury of time and wealth.

“There’s, of course, a lot of socio-economic reasons why people don’t vote because they’re really busy and don’t have the mental space to think about this,” she says.

With concerns that our elected officials are now gaining office through appealing to older, wealthier residents, Greaves says it’s vital that these representatives don’t lose sight of the fact they are meant to be representing a far more diverse community than the people who vote.

… this stupid gelded little woke snowflake journalist NEVER ONCE mentions the fact that the local election is run by a private company AND THAT is why the voter turn out is so spectacularly low!

The issue is that the local elections are subcontracted out to a private company who have a vested interest in low voter turns outs!

We are such a cheap arsed, deregulated basket case of a country, we sub contracted our democratic obligations to a private company who maximise their return if fewer people engage and cost less resource!

In the last week of voting, only 8 polling booths were open for a city of 1.2million!

Here they are.

Again, that is Republican tactics in Georgia level voter suppression right there.

So if I wasn’t enrolled to vote, the only place I could have voted was one of these 8 venues.

Central Auckland, Great Barrier Island, Henderson, Manukau, Orewa, Pukekohe, Waiheke and fucking Warkworth.

How the Christ does that list sound reasonable to anyone else?

8 booths for 1.2million?

It isn’t.

It’s a victory for the private company who has this outrageous contract in the first place!

They run postal ballots because it is far cheaper, not because it engages the population! It’s almost as if Glen isn’t even aware that a private company runs the local elections, and so he ends up writing meaningless twaddle and his ignorance is shared almost universally by the political journalists and punditry who also seem to have no idea!

Our Fourth Estate is making us more stupid!

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