Voting for voting’s sake

In this month’s general election people will not only be asked to vote for what party and person they want to form the Government of New Zealand they will also be asked to vote on the country’s electoral system.

The referendum on November 26 will ask each voter two questions; firstly whether or not to keep the current MMP system and secondly, which of four voting alternatives they prefer. 

In Mixed Member Proportional voters currently have two votes; one for a party and one for a person in a constituency.

The party vote determines the overall allocation of seats in Parliament.

A constituency vote is for an individual and the candidate who wins the most votes wins the seat.

To enter Parliament, a party must win either a constituency or win at least five per cent of the party vote.

Waikato University Political Science lecturer Alan Simpson says MMP is the most proportional voting system.

“In most cases you will end up with a coalition government. Most people like the thought of a coalition as it means parties are kept in check.

“FPP is the only system that is a non-proportional system. Around the world some form of proportional representation is favoured.”

The United States uses the FPP voting system and Dr Simpson says it can provide both strong and weak governments.

Dr Simpson says with SM voting means whoever defines the government is the party who wins the most electorate seats.

“You usually finish up with a single of multi-party dominance, it is a shift back towards FPP.”

FPP - First Past the Post

Under FPP, New Zealand is split into 120 electorates and each electorate has an MP representative in Parliament.

Each voter has one vote to choose the candidate they want to represent the electorate they live in and the candidate who gets the most votes wins.

The winning party usually wins a share of the seats in Parliament larger than its share of total country votes. Smaller parties usually receive a smaller share of seats than their share of all the votes.

PV - Preferential Voting

With preferential voting each person votes for an electorate MP, but also ranks the candidates in the order they prefer them.

The candidate who gets more than half of all the first preference votes, ie: the number one votes, wins. If no one gains half the preference votes the candidate with the fewest number one votes is eliminated and their votes go to the next rated candidate.

This process is repeated until one candidate has more than half the votes.  

STV - Single Transferable Vote

Each electorate has more than one MP under this system, with the 120 seats being divided between 24 to 30 electorates, each with between three to seven MPs.

In this system, voters have two choices – to rank the candidates as in PV or for the order of preference published in advance by the political party.

MPs are then elected by receiving a minimum number of votes and candidates who reach the quota from number one votes are elected.

If there are still electorate seats to fill, votes received beyond the quota are transferred to the candidates ranked next. Candidates who then reach the quota are elected.

Then the lowest polling candidate is eliminated and their votes are transferred to the candidates ranked next on those votes.

SM - Supplementary Member

In this case, New Zealand is made up of 120 seats in Parliament and there are 90 electorates. Each person elects an electorate MP and the other 30 seats are made up from political party lists.

Voters get two votes; one for a party and one for a person. The share of the 30 supplementary seats each party gets reflects its share of the party vote, no matter how many electorate seats it wins.  

This is the difference between SM and MMP, where a party’s share of all 120 seats mirrors its share of the party vote.