The Blonde
Is the current voting system working as it should? I would say No. I believe that voters are subjected to misleading information – ‘misinformation’, as it’s known.
When MMP was introduced it was explained simply as one vote for your candidate of choice and one vote for your party of choice. Obviously, if a strong National voter, you voted for the candidate for National and your party vote to the National party: two ticks National. If a strong Labour supporter, one voted similarly: two ticks Labour. We must remind ourselves over and over again that the party vote is not ‘a spare vote’. The party vote is the more important of the two. The size of the party vote is what gets a political party into the governing role.
People not strongly aligned to either party were more likely to spread their vote according to who appealed to them.
One thing that ‘rattles my cage’ is that the small parties, the Greens for example, work hard on voters to vote for them as a ‘support’ party, when, in reality, our votes are far more valuable with the main party of our choice.
The election later this year is such an important one. There has been so much damage to our economy that must be rectified after almost six years of a prime minister who did not appear to understand the basics of our economy, who threw endless money at the news media to keep them on side and who had to read every speech she made (which indicated that they were not her words). She was very good at playing the role, but we need more than that in our next leader. We desperately need a leader who understands business.
Also, a leader who can speak without frantic hand waving is more likely to get my vote!
