by Cimino | 24 Dec 2016 | 0 comments
The need for Aotearoa to have a codified constitution is self-evident. Despite that, the initiative of constitutional lawyer Dr Andrew Butler and former prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer, launched in August, has failed to fire up a nation-wide discussion in the... read more
by Cimino | 11 Nov 2016 | 0 comments
From Day One he’s wanted a better slogan than ‘the World’s most liveable city.’ For his trouble, and even before hearing what that slogan might be, Mayor Phil Goff is being rubbished and ridiculed for wanting to replace the city’s tragically generic branding, with... read more
by Cimino | 19 Oct 2016 | 0 comments
Voting in schools works, or would, if more students were involved. With participation rates so low, the only intervention proven to address the worldwide decline in voter turnout is being relegated to little more than tokenism. Of the nearly 500 intermediate and... read more
by Cimino | 8 Oct 2016 | 0 comments
It is difficult to say which is more egregious. The three mayors yearning for the good old days of single-day polling. Or the mainstream media for being equally ill-informed and not pillorying them for their collective abject lack of evidence-based policy responses to... read more
by Cimino | 5 Oct 2016 | 0 comments
Tessa Berger is quoted, but not by name. In his New Zealand Herald column Political Roundup, Dr Bryce Edwards names neither Tessa, nor the national Kids Voting programme she champions. Dr Edwards suggests local government is headed towards an existential crisis,... read more
by Cimino | 27 Sep 2016 | 0 comments
Every local-body election since its introduction, sees the same disinformation. The rock-solid single-transferable-vote system, first computerised in Aotearoa and used by her for 12 years, is set to endure its triennial onslaught of slings and arrows.... read more
by Cimino | 24 Sep 2016 | 0 comments
Warkworth from 4000 to 20 000 by 2040. That would be a five-fold increase in less than half the 50 years it took the region to treble to today’s population, of about 1.5 million. With this planned growth-rate of more than three times the regional average, Warkworth is... read more
by Cimino | 15 Sep 2016 | 0 comments
Polling gets blamed for a lot of things. For starters, for influencing folk into voting for the winning side. Or, conversely, for influencing folk into voting for the underdog. Whereas, in an ideal world, voters would express their honestly held preference, regardless... read more
by Cimino | 10 Sep 2016 | 1 comment
Three decades of Kids Voting, and ample evidence to back it up. And for half that time, after it was imported from the United States by the then Auckland City Council, kids in Aotearoa have been at it. This year, a record 11 730 students in the Auckland region are... read more
by Cimino | 29 Jul 2016 | 0 comments
In 2013, Len Brown was elected by a mere 16.5% of Aucklanders registered to vote. This was the result of an abysmal 35% turnout, and marginal popularity combined with the inevitable consequences of first-past-the-post. Dazed and disillusioned with the new governance... read more
by Cimino | 10 Jun 2015 | 0 comments
It is possible to put a price on better democracy. At least to the extent that combining local and general elections would nearly halve the cost of holding them, and massively improve local-body turnout to boot. Extensive experience elsewhere suggests that if New... read more
by Cimino | 10 Sep 2014 | 0 comments
Before 1996, it mattered. In order to participate in an election, a person needed to be registered in an electorate. This requirement reflected the Westminster system whereby the extent of a voter’s democractic entitlement was, at best, to help elect a local... read more
by Cimino | 25 Oct 2013 | 1 comment
Another local body election, and another uninformed swipe at STV. While it is probable that the at-large, single-transferable-vote, district health board elections are the single biggest reason only a third of Aucklanders returned their ballots, the explanations for... read more
