Our Local Democracy has been damaged by privatisation – it’s time to change that
As I argued recently in last week’s Waatea news column, the vast number of Kiwis do not known that our local democracy has been privatised to just 2 private companies, it is NOT run by the Electoral Commission!
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Election Services – an Auckland-based company that runs elections for Auckland Council and several other North Island councils.
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electionz.com – a Christchurch-based company that provides election services (including postal voting and online voting systems) for many South Island and some North Island councils.
Look at the impact of privatising local elections over that time on participation rates:
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1992–1998: turnout in the 50–55% range.
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2001 (Local Electoral Act introduced, outsourcing becoming the norm): turnout dropped to ~47%.
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2004–2010: around 43–49%.
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2013–2019: fell further to 39–42%.
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2022: hit a modern low of ~36% nationwide.
Ever since we privatised our local elections, turn out has crashed, and that’s because these two private companies don’t care about the participation rate, they care about making money on their contracts!
Last Auckland Mayoralty election in 2022, there were barely a dozen polling booths where you could cast a special vote if you weren’t enrolled. Many poor people and renters bounce from house to house to house and their instability makes it difficult to update election details to vote.
12 booths for a city with 1.2million.
That is the sort of voter suppression that would make the Republicans blush.
By outsourcing our local elections to private companies, we have destroyed our participation rates, it is time to remove all contracts from these two companies and take the elections back into the Electoral Commission and run them with the same level of funding we run National Elections!
When you consider the mass mistakes made in this current electoral cycle…
Hastings voting booklet blunder leaves 27 candidates’ profiles missing
…and the pitiful turn out to date, we must save our local democracy from being hijacked by Right Wing Hate groups and focus on the common good.
More participation guarantees that quality of democracy, less allows Right Wing Hate groups to dominate.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
The right-wing hate NZers why?
It’s patently clear that under this abysmal and corrupt bunch of bullies, our lovely NZ is no longer a democracy. WHATEVER THEY WANT they ram through at such speed and lack of forethought, they fail to see the future pitfalls or even consider the end results. NZ is now a dictatorship with fools at the helm. So voters, if you can’t see this happening in front of your eyes you are either supportive, apathetic, or just plain stupid. I can’t wait for this appalling CoC to implode – the sooner the better for all of us.
Burnt my voting papers the moment they arrived. None of the spineless creeps currently standing will stand up to the vile government over water charges
Just one more example were the market can not provide.
How many examples do the ideologies of this stupid economic model need, to prove that their vaulted markets are utterly worthless and do nothing but provide negative outcomes to the welfare and good governance of society?
Personally I would have thought one example was enough but we have health care, housing, service provision, election management and the list goes on and on. This is a failed ideology – time to grow up folks.
Bastards kicked me off the roll – I guess they prefer more direct forms of democracy.
Bur how can we get rid of this economic model and the charlatans that have us under their thrall. They just show their teeth to our complaints in a travesty of a smile, The thought from the past that applies is the quote from activist Upton Sinclair USA. Quote by Upton Sinclair: — ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. https://www.goodreads.com › quotes › 21810-it-is-diffi… ‘
Interesting man questioning everything…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair 1878-1968
Wrote The Jungle – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
,,,novel, The Jungle, which exposed the labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.[1] In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the “free press” in the United States. Four years after publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created….</i
Those were the days. Now we are undoing the work that activists with strong values worked for and achieved,,, (now it’s woked for!).
Sinclair thought about change – ideas on single-tax:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_tax …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair#Personal_life
In 1910, the Sinclairs moved to the single-tax village of Arden, Delaware, where they built a house.[45] I
n 1911, Sinclair was arrested for playing tennis on the Sabbath and spent eighteen hours in the New Castle County prison in lieu of paying a fine.
(Note that our Ex-PM’s surname is Ardern! Also note that I entered a search in google for her with surname spelled Arden, and AI put this spelling as a heading for the images that came up on the page of entries correctly as Ardern. That was confusing and faults of identity I have noticed with images marked as AI.)
Extra news –
https://www.brown.edu/news/2023-09-29/ardern
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Jacinda Ardern, who served as prime minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023, will visit Brown University on Thursday, Oct. 5, to deliver the 102nd Stephen A. Ogden Jr. ’60 Memorial Lecture on International Affairs…
In a presentation titled “Global Leadership in the 21st Century,” Ardern will share insights from her career in public service.
The writeup sounds really good. How did we let this excellent politician slip through our fingers? We should appreciate that we need better pollies, and give the good ones the tools to carry out worthwhile useful policies
I think.