Ed Said - Voting’s over but the shouting will go on

 

Sorry but it just seems to be the timing of our print sequence that our paper goes to print on a Friday, this time the day be-fore the election. Of course it makes not one atom of difference to the result – and post-mortems, hard luck stories or jockeying for supremacy is likely to lead to weeks, if not months, of negotiations anyway. Remember Winston keeping Helen Clark hanging in the balance for months in 2005 when he was, by his own admission later was ‘always going to run with the majority party.’

Many candidates will never be heard from again and many , thanks, or no thanks, to MMP, will just be beginning their politi-cal lives with a successful outcome this time yet blissfully unaware of the intrusion and scrutiny the job, their constituents and the media will bring to their daily lives and eve-ry movement from here on in.

Huge winning margins will be eroded for some, though this is expected to some degree as the myriad of minnow parties only really serve to spread voting without of-fering any tangible value to anyone but their small band of followers. Others will scrape into life in the Beehive by the barest width

of a honeycomb and, unless they can shoul-der their way closer to the ‘Queen’ will sim-ply live the life of a drone until relieved of their duties three years hence or die trying.

Recent opinion polls and reports say those who didn’t vote in 2008 or 2011 sim-ply didn’t get around to it, forgot, or weren’t really interested. Several young people i heard interviewed on National Radio said there wasn’t enough information out there for them to understand or decide who to vote for. Utter rubbish! These are the peo-ple who spend most of their lives peering at a computer screen, an iPod or a tablet to-gether with a multitude of phone apps, so there is no reason not to avail oneself of the information providing one is at all interest-ed. At least several were forthright enough to say they simply weren’t interested.

The NZ General Social Survey says 21 percent who didn’t vote in 2011 gave the reasons listed above. A further 7 percent absconded because they felt their votes wouldn’t make any difference. This is near-ly double that from the 2008 election. Age, income and migrant status also have a bear-ing on voting behaviour. Twenty-five per-cent of 18-29 year-olds are not registered, 42 percent of those registered did not vote in 2011, the most prevalent group being young women. For some reason those who feel financially burdened are also less likely

to vote and understandably new migrants have low voting rates.

it amuses me somewhat to think that

someone is paid a hefty salary by the gov-ernment (taxpayer) to collate these statis-tics. i have often questioned the purpose of being a demographer for, as interesting as they may be, they neither prove nor change anything. Democracy decrees we have a choice yet democracy was, according to my understanding, majority rules. Don’t like the government after three years? Well, vote them out. Basically a fairly simple equation yet one which can’t possibly happen under MMP anyway. Majority parties doing deals with basic non-entities shows how flawed the system is. A system that governs accord-ing to the lowest common denominator is, ultimately, doomed to failure.

in time laws will change to the benefit of a few, boundaries will change which will supposedly level the playing field for voters, businesses and those less privileged but in the end we will all get up in the morning as usual , and go off to work as usual and, in the long run little else will change.

i wonder if i’ll still think this way after Saturday night. We’d like to hear your views on the outcome too. Cheers,

Rob Pooley

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