Why complaining about Wayne Brown winning isn’t sour grapes!
Let’s be very clear, it is not sour grapes to be critical of Wayne Brown’s win.
It is not conspiratorial to point out that the local body elections are rigged.
Because they are.
Let me explain.
Firstly, landlords with multiple properties in multiple electorates all get to vote in every single one of them. Their power and vote is vastly larger than the poor or renters. Renters pay rates through their rents, so let’s not pretend they don’t have a right to have a say in local elections.
Secondly, what most political commentators and pundits had no idea of was that the local elections are run by a private company. We are such a nation of cheap arseholes that we subcontract our election obligations to a private company who have a vested interest in low turn outs because that’s cheaper!
It’s this element of the local elections being run by a private company that highlight how rigged the local election system is.
In Auckland 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.
Bernard Hickey over at the Kākā highlights how the poor in Auckland don’t vote…
The Democratic Deficit of young, poor renters
Previous analysis of local turnout rates in Auckland from the 2016 election found a close connection between deprivation scores, home ownership rates and voting rates. Those in the richest neighbourhoods with the highest percentage of home owners voted the most, while those in the poorest with the lowest home ownership rates voted at the lowest rates.
Turnout rates in council elections are even lower than in general elections, as are enrollment rates. Overall enrolments nationwide have slumped for young cohorts over the last 20 years. Local Government participation has been falling in recent years, even relative to general election turnout.
Home ownership is also a key indicator of voting in local elections, with those councils with high ownership rates having the highest voting rates. The biggest ‘blob’ of low home ownership and low turnout in the chart below is Auckland.
…pretending that a private company with a vested interest in low turn out to limit the cost via a postal system that structurally punishes the poor is not a system you can pretend is fair.
I’d like to add, I made the exact same criticisms about Goff’s win 3 years ago and argued that his paltry 35% turn out was no mandate and was symptomatic of a broken system!
The only solution is to take the contract off the private company and get the Electoral Commission to run the same level of engagement they generate for the national elections.
We need one day of voting with the same intensity of polling booths with a 2 week early vote window.
That would cost money, and because NZ is such a cheap arse nation, that’s the only real issue here.
I’m not being a Trump MAGA lunatic here by suggesting the election was stolen, I’m arguing that the very structure of the elections run by a private company that doesn’t give two shits about the turn out makes the process a rigged casino where the rich benefit.
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Short- term thinking comes to mind and what does it say about the Aucklanders that voted for Brown. In three years time he may well need a personal asresistant to wipe his arse maybe push him around in his wheelchair, not a good look but it does say a lot about the sort of people that elected him.
And your blog says a lot about your attitude to older people .Biden is 84 and you could say he is pushing the envelope but he is still functioning.
I gather that person lives in Lower Hutt where they do and, unfortunately, say things differently. Her antipathy to Pakeha is nothing new, but her age- ism is, and it is perplexing when veteran Scotsman Winston Peters is a very able political performer and by no means time-expired as we may see forthwith.
I read Richard Prebble’s article about why people don’t vote (the first time I have bothered to read him since the early 1980s) which combined with Chris Trotter’s article on the limited ability of councilors to make any meaningful change gives a good explanation for low voting rates. I was not impressed by the limited choice in our local council (Selwyn) voting so I can understand how others might decide to skip voting.
The problem is that most commentators NOT living in South Auckland see a harmonious and single Pacifica demographic.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Efeso Collins is Samoan and as such very unlikely to get the Tongan vote.
Pacifica is very much divided upon racial grounds. Samoan, Tongan, Fijian, Nuie, etc.
Just like the Indian community is separated upon religious and ,to a lesser extent, cast origins. Sikh and Hindu are very much seperated with Fijian Indians considered the lowest cast.
South Auckland is the greatest gathering of multi culture demographics In NZL if not the world). No single person can expect to get the vote here by represnting a single culture. South Auckland, having been abandoned by Labour ,there was no way Efeso Collins was going to get the vast majority of the vote here. South Auckland is just too diverse culturally and Efeso Collins never reached out to other communities and to the best of my knowledge never visited places like Clover Park, Clendon, etc.
The overwhelming desire by the South Auckland community was for direction and getting things done. Efeso Collins never provided that. Not that Wayne Brown can or will but at least he said he would.
Be interesting if Wayne Brown will address South Auckland’s two biggest concerns; crime and infill high density housing being built without supporting infrastructure. South Auckland will be pleased to see AT gone with their incessant construction of speed humps and 30km speed limits.
The power of the property owner is hardly vastly greater than the renter. If I own a property (and therefore pay rates) in New Plymouth and in Hawera get to vote in both elections. I still only get one vote in an electorate. But to deny me a vote in an electorate where I pay rates would be “Taxation without representation” and thats not ok.
As for the private company running the elections they need to be booted and it handed over to the Electoral Commission. Yesterday.
Yeah but renters can still enrol to vote and it would seem a lot didn’t
Good point Gerrit
Sometimes Frankie we have trouble working out which end of you is talking!
At least down ‘ere in poor old Christchurch we had two very good candidates for mayor, unlike Auckland which had the choice of grumpy old git or grisly homophobe scold.