Analysis: Once, Kim Dotcom presided over his $3.5 million anti-establishment Internet Party campaign, at the vast property north of Auckland that he called the Dotcom Mansion. Footage of armed police leaping from helicopters to raid the house went around the world.
I think overhangs are inevitable if you’re going to combine electorates with a party vote, and until now they’ve been accepted fairly gracefully as a natural byproduct of the system we have.
I think people can try to engineer an overhang but it’s a double-edged sword: National now seems to regret the Epsom arrangement and in general the current possibility of an arrangement where they get many electorates but not much party vote means that they have to contend with the rise of Act and NZ First as significant right wing parties.
Any change towards a system that favours a two-party arrangement is one I’m not in favour of — it is good that we have representation of many perspectives in parliament, even if I disagree with at least half of them.
I’m still okay with the current system (though I want ranked choice voting rather than FPP) and I resent having to argue to defend it simply because this guy is splashing his money around.
If we had ranked choice voting for the electorates, we could remove overhangs. Basically if there’s an overhang, the seat with the thinnest majority gets the votes transferred
But then you could have an electorate not decided by the people of that electorate?
Yeah I agree with you, big parties probably don’t want to engineer an overhang, but when it’s some guy running the campaign they don’t have much choice in the matter.
I also agree (along with most of the country since we recently had a referendum) that our MMP system is generally working. I’d also like a ranked choice style vote as well!