Note To Future Self

Friday was Anna’s last day in the office.

So by Monday she was ready (at a notable 39.17653 weeks pregnant) to can some rhubarb compote. And why wouldn’t you start a massive, messy, sticky caramalized-sugar-stuck-to-the-ceiling project which you might need to, er, change your plans on a moment’s notice.

Newp. Nothing to report. Move along.

(Much belatedly) thanks for the ‘frigerator art starter kit.

And the other stuff, too.

I expect most folk in the frozen North missed the news, but we held an election in this timezone last Saturday. And we decided to kick the Queen, that old pie-biter, outta here…

Just kidding.

The short story is we shuffled a bit to the right from the “pro-business, kindof progressive” party (Helen Clark, the outgoing PM from the Labour party, left) to the “pro-business, kindof conservative” party (John Key, the new PM from the National Party, right).

(images from Wikipedia)

Given this makes very little difference to you, our diligent reader, here are a few random factoids instead:

1. We vote on Saturday. It does make a certain sense, doesn’t it?
2. Any permanent resident (who’s been in the country for more than a year) can vote, citizen or not. Technically, we’re on work visa and can’t, but all my furriner co-workers did.
3. It’s a parliamentary system. There’s just one house, then whichever parties can get a majority in parliament (solo or by coalition) huddle up, form a government, put forward a Prime Minister, etc who must be approved by the Governer-General (there’s HRM again, always at the reins of power). Of course, with two major parties, you typically know your PM options well in advance.
4. OK, this is the tough one. No test on this, I promise. NZ currently uses MMP (Mixed member proportional) voting. Parliament has 120 seats. (not literally, of course. I think it has benches). Approximately 70 of the seats are assigned to districts (approximately due to another complication, see here for more agonizing detail), or electorates.

   When you step into the voting booth, you’re asked to cast two votes (just two — national elections are done separately from municipal and there’s no state-level here). The first vote is for your electorate seat, which is a straight-ahead mano e mano competition. The second vote is the party vote where you choose one of the political parties (Labour, National, Green, Stark Raving Looney, Legalize Sheep Dip, etc).

   Now this is where things get complicated. Any party which wins an electoral seat or which wins 5% of the party vote gets a number of seats in parliament in proportion to their share of the party vote.

   So, let’s say National wins 50% of the party vote, so they get 60 parliament seats. But suppose National candidates only won in 25 of the electorates … well National gets another 35 seats (from those 50 spare seats mentioned before) to dole out from their list or worthies.

   This can lead to some interesting cases, like overhang where a party wins many electorates, giving it a representation in parliament in excess of its Party vote percentage. This is typically the case with Maori party, who have seven electoral seats, but won less than (um 7/120th) of the party vote. In that case they just add a couple of extra seats to Parliament (uh, again, not literally) to make up the difference.

   As a system, it provides an interesting mix between local representation, and support for minority opinions (i.e. Green party). It’s also no crazier than the electoral college.

5. Due to an electoral law, it’s illegal to show any sort of political advertising (posters, TV, bumper stickers) on election day.

   In fact, when we tuned to the local interweb news site for election results at 4 on Saturday, we were greeted with:

   
   
   (click for a larger version)
   

   What? No vapid, babbling commentators? No maps turning red and blue? No snap decisions which turn out to be completely false?

   How civilized.

6. And one more. The left-ish Labour party is red and the right-ish National party is blue. It still takes me a second….

Darnit. I make good compost.

My secret? “Supplemental nitrogen.”

No, don’t think too hard about that one.