Holy grails and silver bullets and day-and-half to vote

by Cimino | 10 Oct 2019 | Climate mobilisation, Local, Youth voting

It’s long since time to jettison the obligatory if-we-don’t-act-on-climate-within-so-many-years exhortation. Truth is that, since 1988, when not only Dr James Hansen but Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher“we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of...

stv bicentennial extraordinary town-hall talk

by Cimino | 3 Sep 2019 | Local, STV, Youth voting

Ideally, the bicentennial of stvsingle-transferable-vote should be held where the Birmingham Society for Literary and Scientific Improvement held the world’s first election with it. But even if that ultimate location—were it known, and were it still standing—was the...

Crude reminder of royally half-cocked commission

by Cimino | 17 Aug 2019 | Local, STV, Youth voting

First-past-the-post, 200 years after the first single transferable vote election, deserves to be a very distant memory. But, thanks to the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance stvsingle-transferable-vote-ignoramuses, the region is about to elect its fourth mayor...

You say you want a constitution and less democracy

by Cimino | 24 May 2018 | Democracy index, Election turnout, Term of office, Youth voting

You say you want a constitution and less democracy What’s good for doctors of medicine, it would appear, doesn’t apply to doctors of law. The imperative to first do no harm is being violated in the latest proposal by Dr Andrew Butler and Sir Geoffrey Palmer qc...

Let’s do this, and deliver unperverted democracy

by Cimino | 1 Oct 2017 | Coalition democratisation, Democracy index, Electoral enrolment, Youth voting

Let’s do this, and deliver unperverted democracy It would be hard to contrive a more effective means of turning youth off. After being lectured for months on the importance of enrolling and voting, young people are now told nothing. Not only are they not told how...

Just when Jacinda needed Germany most

by Cimino | 26 Sep 2017 | Coalition democratisation, Election turnout, Electoral enrolment, Youth voting

When Jacinda Ardern stepped up, Labour was on 24% and National was at 47%. Once the special votes are counted, which include whatever youthquake or youth-tremor has occurred, the New Zealand National Party share will be lucky to be 45%, which means that about 55%minus...