@ James G
All your points are fair, but could equally be used to oppose your suggestion ie instead of non-voting MPs, the people who would be those MPs should just feed information into the house through the MPs who were elected.

>> In any case, the review is only about MMP specifically, not other aspects of how Parliament/Government works, and I think these suggestions probably fall outside that scope <<

Sure, as does a proposal to add extra non-voting MPs to the house I would guess. That's why when it comes to the MPP review, I think it best to focus our energy on making strong arguments against the threshold (5% or 4%), rather than messing around with other proposals (yours or mine) which, although worth considering in themselves, are not likely to be adopted by a panel reviewing MMP.

Hei kōnā
Strypey

I still think it would be better to have our own MPs in Parliament whose purpose is to forward our views in Parliamentary debate, and who are chosen by us on the basis of how well we think they can do so.

The Commission is forbidden from considering the number of MPs in Parliament, so I'm not suggesting adding more. I guess you could be right that the Commission might still consider my suggestion outside their brief. However I nevertheless think we have a better chance with this than getting the threshold dropped entirely. The Commission has heard arguments for removing the threshold entirely, but holds to the original Commission's view that this would risk ineffective government, so I don't see much cause for hope on this front. Regardless of whether their concern is valid or not, I think we have to work around it. So I'm aiming for the best solution possible within this constraint.

The second and final round of submissions on the MMP review closes on 7 September. This is our last opportunity to have a say in MMP for the foreseeable future. I've put forward my suggestion, if anyone else has a better one, raise it now.

I've had a read on the Commissions draft report, specifically the section on threshold. I was pleased to see they plan to drop the ability of list MPs to piggyback on the back of ex-major-party electorate MPs like Anderton, Peters, Dunne, Banks, and Harawira. They argue this will prevent the warped strategic voting that results when people vote for a small party with a popular electorate MP, out of fear of wasting their vote, instead of the small party that most closely represents their views (but isn't likely to win an electorate).

They are actually not opposed to dropping the threshold, they just think it would be such a major change that it would require a referendum, not just a legislative tweak by the sitting parliament. They also say a threshold of anything "less than 3%" would trigger that.

How about we (PP and supporters) argue that the Commission should recommend:
a) an immediate change of the threshold to 3%

This would prevent the warped results that come from people voting for an established party, out of fear of wasting their vote, instead of the small party that most closely represents their views but isn't guaranteed to pass 5% (or even 4%). I think if the PP can gets it paperwork done in time to field a list by the next election, it could realistically get 3%.

b) a referendum in the next election on:
i) whether people want a threshold at all

The established parties would likely campaign *for* a threshold, and emerging parties like the PP against. Hopefully there would be a robust public debate over a year or two, as there was with the various MMP referenda, and let democracy prevail.

The Commission say "In conclusion, therefore, the Commission’s sense is that 5% is too high and that 3% is the lowest end of an acceptable range. We suggest 4% is preferable." which I take as pretty strong opposition to lowering the threshold below 3%. To be honest, I think their suggestion that "anything below a party vote threshold of 3% ... would in effect constitute a new voting system." is a bit disingenuous, and I'm inclined to wonder whether this reflects their strength of opposition to lowering the threshold below 3% rather than any logical argument that MMP with a threshold lower than 3% would be something other than MMP.

In any case, after noting "a significant number argued for much lower thresholds. Some urged us to adopt the lowest possible threshold consistent with maintaining effective Parliaments and governments. Some argued for no threshold", they recommended 4%. What can we say now on this that they haven't already heard, that will change their minds?

"The great weight of submissions favoured lowering the threshold ... Most of these argued for 4%." Assuming this reflects public opinion, why would we expect to change this?

@James G
I admire your pragmatism, but I think Richard Stallman has some good advice on drawing a line between a tactical compromise, and selling yourself out.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html



I think it's reasonable given their terms of reference. A threshold under 3% would require some rebalancing to reduce the number of overhang seats election results could create, especially as the number of elecorate seats grows with the population. In either case, they have not expressed a strong opposition, nor any strong argument against a 3% threshold, which would be much more attainable, and being perceived as such, would be even more attainable.



This is somewhat misleading. Look at the graphs in the Paper. Of those that mentioned a figure under 5%, the largest number mentioned 4%. However, if you add up all the proposals under 5%, there is a clear majority in favour of going lower than 4%.

My response to the Commission is here:
http://www.coactivate.org/projects/disi ... mmp-review

I encourage everyone to make some kind of response to the Commission before the closing date next week. You can do it totally online using this form:
http://www.mmpreview.org.nz/node/add/feedback

Ma te wā
Strypey

Selling ourselves out of what? If we managed to convince the Commission to change their decision on balancing representation with effective government, and shame the government into adopting the proposal (which will be harder if they can plausibly claim they think effective government is at risk), and if we managed to leapfrog over the Alliance, Libertarianz, Democrats, ALCP, United Future (each <1%), ACT, Mana, Mäori (each <2%), and the Conservatives (<3%), without having the financial backing the Conservatives had, so make it into parliament, and if National are unable to form a government with ACT (if they're still there), the Mäori Party, and United Future, and Labour are unable to form a government with the Greens, New Zealand First, and United Future, then we might get a chance to make our votes in parliament mean something if we can beat the Greens, the Mäori Party, and New Zealand First in a race to sell ourselves out.

But they have already heard arguments for a lower threshold, and nevertheless decided to go with 4%. So we get them to change their minds by repeating the same arguments that they heard but weren't convinced by first time?

Oh, right you are. That quote wasn't just misleading, it was plain wrong. Your response above is misleading though (although not wrong), yes, the majority wanted to lower the threshold, and yes, the majority of those who wanted to lower the threshold wanted to lower it below 4%, however overall only around 30% (from my estimation reading the graph) wanted to lower the threshold below 4%.

@James G
You seem to have mistaken my comment about compromise as an attack on your personal integrity, or that of the party. It was neither.

I'm not against your idea, and I'm not attacking it. I think it's well worth considering, among a raft of possible options for making overturning the dogma of parliamentary supremacy that gets passed off as "democracy" (governance by consent of the governed). I briefly described a few of the models I like in the Direct Democracy thread, as well as in this one. All I'm saying is I think that like me, you're probably going to have to wait until the public are invited to make comments on the report of the Constitutional Review in 2013, with its much broader and deeper scope, to get a proper hearing for your proposal.

James G


I see this as quite achievable. Most of these are examples of what a friend of mine calls a "spent force". In some cases they had much higher support, and have dwindled (Alliance, UF, ACT, Maori), in other cases they have reached a plateau in their early elections and stay there with a diminishing rates of returns on the energy they invest each election (Libz, Dems, ALCP).

Of your list, the only emerging parties are Mana and the Cons. They are rising mainly because they are bleeding support from one or more of the spent forces. I know from personal observation that a lor of former Alliance and Maori support is going to Mana, and I'm guessing that the '3 strikes' neoconservatives who supported ACT, and the fundamentalist nutters who used to support Future NZ, UF, Destiny, and the Kiwi Party are the ones flocking to the Cons banner

The PP could potentially draw some votes from all the parties you list (except maybe UF and Cons), if it were to:
* maintain a strong focus on personal freedom and privacy
* create a coherent economic policy based on ideas of co-production and peer-to-peer economics,
* adopt a drug law reform policy which is at least as progressive at that of the Greens,
* agree on an ethnic-relations policy with is neither neo-colonial (and anti-Māori) nor neo-aristocratic (and anti-Pākeha), perhaps based on a confederation of autonomous regions
http://www.indymedia.org.nz/article/831 ... enua-and-n

The main source of potential votes for the PP though, is the 30% or so of registered voters who could not bring themselves to support any of the parties on the ballot, because they didn't feel fully represented by the ones who had a chance of getting in, and couldn't be bothered leaving the house to vote for a party which they didn't believe could get over 5%. Although I think a registered PP would gain votes from this pool anyway, I think it would gain more the lower the threshold is dropped from 5%.

This is why I think it's worth making an argument on the Proposals Paper in favour of dropping the threshold more. If nothing else, it might balance out those who will give up on increasing it, and shift their support to retaining 5% in their second round of submissions.



You may be right. My point is that the Commissioners have already discounted the arguments for raising the threshold, and for keeping it at 5%, as did the original Royal Commission who designed our MMP system. So of those who agree with the Commissioners that the threshold should be less than 5%, a majority support 5% or less.

BTW I'd be interested to see the results of a formal poll where people are able to rank their preference among percentages from 1%-15%, then an STV style algorithm is used to progressively eliminate the least-supported candidates and move each persons vote to the next un-elimimated number down their preference list, until a consensus is reached. In fact, this may well be a good way to run the referendum I ask for in my representation.

No, I just have a very different estimation of the potential risk and benefit involved in compromising or not in this case.

I'd want to be cautious about additional policy, although I think it's worth discussing.

The median would pretty much do this, I think, but AFAIK a citizen-initiated referendum can only have two options (as it stands).

Tēnā koutou



Without a policy platform that covers a number of areas, while remaining consistent with core values (freedom, privacy etc), the PP will likely suffer the same fate as the Cannabis Party. What that party (and many other marginal parties) lack is a policy development process which is agile, member-driven, and highly democratic; allowing policy to be periodically revisited and tweaked as the party grows and matures as a political entity. If the PP can be seen to have this, it will attract membership (since membership has a clear benefit over passive support).

>> The median would pretty much do this, I think, but AFAIK a citizen-initiated referendum can only have two options (as it stands). <<

Sure, which is my I propose to the Commission to recommend a government-initiated referendum.

Ma te wā
Strypey