Maori Party Overhang

I don't know the exact maths myself, but it appears that if Jim wins his Wigram seat with less party votes than would make up 1 seat, and the Maori party wins all 7 maori seats, then an overhang would mean that National couldn't govern alone with 51% of the vote.

Is this scenario possible and if so, for what democratic reason do those seats even exist? I can understand the Wigram case, but surely if the Maori seats were to remain they should drop them to 4 or less...

Those on the Maori roll seem to have incredible power to form a left wing government - vote Labour for party and Maori for your electorate, is it fair that their vote makes up so much more of parliament than everyone elses?

And how is the abolishment of these seats racist? Maori still get to vote don't they?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10539439
Editorial: Poetic justice is served should Maori hold balance of power

If the Maori party win at 7 seats, but also secure 6% of the Party vote then National could still govern alone with 51%.

AFAIK, the number of Maori seats isn't fixed. It depends on the number of Voters on the Maori roll.



Also, there is always the option to do what they do in Germany, and that's add in extra list MPs from the other parties so that you maintain proportionality.

Lot of statements/questions in there so...

Firstly, it's not just a Maori Party overhang - Progressive and United Future are quite possibly going to cause overhangs themselves. The nature of the Maori seats tends to amplify their overhang slightly though. I really doubt Mr Dunne is going to stand aside from a governing coalition when his overhang gets him in there.

Secondly, under pretty much every reasonably likely scenario, a party with 51% of the party vote would be able to govern alone. In the highly unlikely scenario that they wouldn't, then I would suggest that Progressive, United Future and the Maori Party at least abstain - nobody wants an overhang defining the outcome that much.

The fact that you state they have "incredible power to form a left wing government" speaks volumes - they can make up part of a coalition of any side; it's down to them and their constituents they represent as to what form of coalition they'd support. Given that Maori are so massively overrepresented in poverty, health, education and crime statistics it would seem natural for them to currently tend left. If I had to guess I'd suggest you don't want a left-wing government, but that's their call for representation as they see fit.


The overhangs in general are a minor issue that is entirely necessary if we want to retain some form of electorate representation in a proportional system. I'm all for a review of Maori seats in the age of proportional representation as the electorate representation it provides amplifies overhang possibilities, and proportional representation may be achieved through MMP itself - although the threshold would have to be drastically reduced.
But something most non-Maori New Zealanders seem to want to just forget about is the "suggestion" of joint rule/special status/whatever you want to call it implied in the Treaty. At the very least it suggests that Maori should be somewhat over-represented in Parliament.

The talk of "king-maker" bugs me. A bunch of parties (proportionally approximating the voting population) have to make a majority to rule. Frankly if National and Labour grew up beyond the FPP mentality of "blue vs red" then they should start looking to form (vast) majority government that would truly represent the people.

MMP is dressed up as ‘fairness’ compared to FPP, but is flawed in its own ways.

The MMP electorate and party vote should really be done with a single tick. This would have addressed the unfairness of FPP without creating the ‘strategic voter’ sham.

Mike Moore: Maori Party's agenda needs clarification now

How would that work? Sorry, never heard it mooted before.

Are you saying retain the electorate representatives of before but require a majority government? Seems a bit pointless because you lose all proportionality with that - you just return to a series of FPP elections at an electorate level so inevitably it goes back to two/three major parties winning everything and then having to cobble together a 50%+ majority between themselves which would be even harder.

I think what he means is you have one vote which counts as your candidate and party vote. The proportion of votes each party gets still determines the make-up of parliament (rather than the number of MPs) you just can't split your vote between an MP and a party like Epsom voters did for Rodney Hide in the last election. But as you said first time I've ever heard the idea mooted so would need to give it more thought before forming an opinion of the idea.

But you lose proportionality - for example the Greens may be "liked" by 10% of the population (random number from last polls), but there is no way they would win 10% of the seats, which run in an FPP manner.

To put it another way, if the Green's gained 20% of the vote in every electorate, they would still likely have ZERO representation in parliament (because winning 20% in an electorate gets you nothing when the other guys get 35% and win).

Yes but they still might get 10% of the overall popular vote entitling them to the seats up for grabs for MPs that did notg win an electorate.

I think the Alliance got something like that in the last MMP election but only won two seats, under a one vote MMP system they would still get 10% of the seats in parliament because you would still have around 50% of the seats decided by the popular vote.

Gah last FPP election

OK, so the suggestion is that you give one vote and it's for a party?
And the party that wins in the electorate becomes the electorate representative
And we keep 120-odd seats and do the top-up deal?


That's pretty much a list only model - I think this may be able to work really. Pure proportionality etc.

Yeah I guess so, but I imagine it would still be possible to retain the electorate seats at the same time by having 50% electorate seats and then 50% proportional seats. As I said not sure whether I agree with the idea just yet though.

STV would be nice. If you're not smart enough to understand how it works when it's explained to you, honestly you shouldn't be voting.

I think we need some asian and pacific island seats too.

They make up just as much of the population as maori and this is supposed to be 'fair'.

Might make the people of Botany feel a bit better too.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10539660 : lol :

Umm

As I don't have a graduate degree in pure maths, actually I don't understand how STV works

Ever seen the algorithm they use?

And dont' give me the dumbed down explanation either. The fact is that STV relies on an equation that less than 0.5% of the population would understand (if that)

MMP is not about "we have to have proportionality of race" - it's about proportionality of views.
The Maori seats under MMP has allowed for the possiblity of an over-representation of views of those people who vote in the Maori roll due to overhangs because we've kept electorate representation and top it up with national proportionality.


To me, the argument about Maori representation in Parliament isn't about relative % proportionality anyway. It's about does even the weakest interpretation of rangatiritanga in the Treaty imply that there should be some form of over-representation for Maori. I tend to think it does - not a 50/50, not a new house, but some form of over-representation. Personally I don't think that an historical concept of Maori seats then producing overhang is necessarily the best way to do that under a modern proportional system.

If it does anything of the sort then this is grossly unfair Victorian rubbish which needs to be scrapped immediately.

We should never accept any system where any one class of citizen has legally enshrined privileges above those of the rest of us.

ffs it says 'self sovereignty'

they dont it get... so dont fucking complain that they get a couple of seats in parliament

our democracy isnt totally representative so why bother arguing for it?

so if we cant get 100% we should abandon all pretence?

thanks for clearing that up

sorry, had just got up and was grumpy =)

yeah, i think we should abandon the pretence of our current democractic system and argue from the standpoint that maori were supposed, by the treaty of waitangi, to have self-sovereignty

i believe we would find ourselves arguing back to a similar situation (representative democracy, including some maori seats)
but the difference would be in the form of the argument, not in the conclusion, and that would settle a great many things (after a period of great national debate)

sorry, its off topic...

But they don't have extra privileges. They still only get 1 vote

I get the feeling they owe us for doubling their life expectancy!

Oh I love a good 'Fucking Maoris' thread...

Us? Us?

So... do you owe the Italians for doubling your life expectancy when the Romans introduced clean water, sewers etc to European life (unless you are already European, of course)

Perhaps you owe the Semites for introducing a convenient alphabet

Or what about us Serbs... we gve you the fork, you know

Gah sarcasm on the internet. No one owes anyone anything for what their ancestors did in the past. If they did, I'd be in the exact same boat as the Maoris, having a Scottish background.

My original issue is simply that the Maori seats can give them 2 or 3 more seats than they are entitled, which is no small number. It's also a myth that every Maori voter wants the Maori party to be in parliament, so it hardly empowers Maori.

And I'll go out on the usual cop-out - my best friend is Maori!

Hey - I think Leighton Smith is calling you.

Your comprehension is exceed only by your wit.

If MMP was a computer program, overhangs would be considered a bug and a patch would be released to fix them.

MMP has a certain amount of appeal to it, but the overhang effectively gives some voters 2 votes which it completely against the spirit of democracy.

Say for example the Maori party wins all 7 electorate seats, but 0% of the party vote. All those voters then get their party vote to go towards Labour or whomever they like, and it will count.

I really despised Peters last election getting to decide who would govern the country, and having to watch that smug cunt gloating about it for weeks after the election. The maori party seem to have negotiated their way into a similar position this time, and while I applaud their clever tactics, it's not reasonable that a party with such small representation gets the final say on who governs.