A scrutineer at the last elections says she was horrified to see quite a few voting papers (obviously in spidery elderly writing!) where the voter had tried to fill in all the numbers, because the voting papers don’t tell you you don’t have to vote for the full number of available seats. The “second preference” votes can knock the best candidate out, even if they win the “first preference” round of counting. “This is nothing short of disastrous and helps explain why so much deadwood has continued in our system.”
“The message is very simple: [in a single member seat, like the Mayor or Waikanae Ward Councilor] just vote for the candidate you want, i.e. write numeral 1 beside that candidate. If you have a genuine second preference, put down a number 2. But if you really don’t think any of the others are up to the job, don’t write any other numbers.”
Maybe a good time to get it properly sorted with council and other interested parties once and for all so it’s all well know for the next elections. This has been a blot on the voting system for many years!
Guess it will be up to the new incoming council.
Going back to First Past the Post would be like “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” The reason it was changed was the successful candidate may have a lot less than 50% support, a preferential system means that – in theory at least – that doesn’t happen. However, there is certainly a need for the council’s 5-person “Communications Team” to communicate instructions/options clearly.
Thanks Geoffrey, This is exactly the information I have been asking the Electoral Commission to educate voters on since STV was chosen as the approved voting system in Kapiti. For 3 elections we have been 1 of only 4 or 5 of the 72 councils using STV and on that basis the Electoral Commission user education budget has remained at zero. Unfortunatly quite a few other councils have been silly enough to recently adopt STV. On the good side tho, at least this is the first election in Kapiti, in near 20 years that the voting order of names has NOT been alphabetical. That change ‘for fairness’ was monumental for me, and also took a number of years to achieve. Districtwide Councillor Jackie Elliott