That got me wondering: How many votes were cast in the Council election (distinct from local boards and other bodies) that did not elect anyone at all. It took a couple of hours to put the spreadsheet together, based on the preliminary results at the Auckland City web site.
I know First Past the Post can be terrible at translating votes into representation, but to be honest it was much, much worse than I thought possible.
In the Albany ward, 80.85% of all votes returned elected no one at all. I find that outrageous. It is a clear demonstration of what a truly awful voting system First Past the Post really is. No good system should see over 80% of all votes end up in the rubbish bin. Only a very bad voting system does that.
The North Shore ward fared slightly better, if you call it that, as 69.7% of votes returned there elected no one at all to the Auckland Council.
Whau ward was next on 69.11% of all votes wasted.
Only two wards, Orakei and Manurewa-Papakura, saw less than 50% of all votes being wasted. But even they were between 44% and 49%.
For Auckland as a whole, the share of wasted votes - those electing no one at all - was 62.5%. That's a lot of wasted votes!
Only 37.5% of all votes cast elected any of the 20 Councillors to "our" new Council. How it can be "ours" when almost two-thirds of us didn't vote for anyone on it an interesting question.
Looking at the Council as a whole, 15 of the 20 Councillors received less than 40% voter support. 13 of the 20 received less than 30% support. That means two-thirds of the Council was elected despite more than 70% of voters in their wards not voting for them. Amazing....and terrible in terms of an outcome that accurately reflect what people voted for, thanks to serious failings of First Past the Post.
Here is the overall picture for Auckland Council in pie chart form.
Here's the vote total and the breakdown by ward, in full, in my publicly accessible spreadsheet on Google Docs. You do not need to login to Google to read it. Just click on the link.
Auckland Council - all wards (includes informals and blank)
Total votes returned: 762,152 (100%)
Total votes for elected: 285,980 (37.5%)
Total votes wasted: 476,172 (62.5%)
Votes wasted by Ward (Votes returned that elected no one)
Albany 80.85%
North Shore 69.67%
Whau 69.11%
Manukau 65.65%
Waitakere 64.80%
Albert-Eden-Roskill 63.53%
Maungakiekie-Tamaki 59.41%
Waitemata Gulf 57.25%
Rodney 56.98%
Franklin 53.69%
Howick 52.78%
Orakei 48.43%
Manurewa-Papakura 44.94%
Auckland Region 62.5%
This election was put to us all as being for "Your Auckland". How can that possibly be true when almost two thirds of us elected no one at all to "our" new Council?
Clearly, the choice of First Past the Post as the voting system was a terrible one. It has meant most people need not have bothered voting all for all the difference it made. None. You could describe FPP as a pillow over the face of Auckland democracy. Smothering it.
Auckland should adopt STV for the next local body elections. Only then, armed with a vote that actually counts, will this city really be "ours".
(Note: The method used was very simple. I counted votes, not voters. In most wards, voters had two votes. I added together all votes for elected candidated and have no way of knowing whether any were cast by one voter or two. It doesn't matter. If we tried to look at individual vote shares by single person elected, the percentages would be MUCH worse, with Michael Goudie in Albany, for exmaple, being elected with less than 10% of the votes. I did include both informal votes - trivial - and blank votes. The blank votes were in the thousands in every ward and can be seen as a vote for "None of the Above" as the ballot was returned, but no one chosen.)
I wouldn't have thought you could blame the FPP system for people being too lazy to put a tick on the voting paper.
ReplyDeleteKerry: I was going to leave the Blanks out...but in every ward there were well over a thousand and in some wards, several thousand. Given that numbers, I wasn't prepared to assume they were lazy. What we can conclude is they were not motivated to vote for anyone on offer, but they did return the ballot. They did not spoil it (informal). On that basis, for a whole-of-democracy view...I included those no-preference 'votes'. But even without them, it doesn't alter the position by much. I'll do another version with them excluded...and see what the effect is. It might change a 69.7% wasted vote share into a 65% wasted vote share. But two thirds of the votes were still wasted.
ReplyDeleteAlso...the spreadsheet I made is there to see. Do your own calculations. :-)
ReplyDeleteGood work Steve - I'll have to find an excuse to use your research in the next blog I do on Akl.
ReplyDeleteTim: Please do! The usual suspects (Herald, et al) have shown no interest. But they aren't really supporters of democracy anyway - or at least any form it that actually allows everyone to have an *effective* say.
ReplyDeleteI don't get it Steve, surely FFP is the most decisive system.
ReplyDeleteMost votes wins, where is the waste in that.
How can 80% votes be wasted unless there are lots of candidates all taking about ten % of votes.
Our MMP system which delivers the tail wagging the dog, is a dog.
Maybe only 40 list seats would be better , maybe the supplementary system, anything but the dog we have now, which is systematically lowering NZ to one of the ,lowest economies in the first world.
Hi Peter. FPP is "decisive", but the decisions thus rendered are poor ones. They could be much better. The goal of any electoral system it to allow voters to choose those who will represent them. First Past the Post produced a result in Auckland where 62.5% of all votes (ie: not just most votes, but a huge MAJORITY of votes) elected no one at all.
ReplyDeleteI would disagree with you about MMP and the tail wagging the dog. If the "dog doesn't have a majority of seats through winning a majority of votes then they have NO RIGHT to expect to rule alone. The "tail" is then - in effect - the MAJORITY of MPs elected by people who vote for OTHER parties. So which is really the tail? The largest minority? Or everyone else?
In practical terms, you should note on looking back at past governments that they have been multi-party and the main party has had a variety of partners who cross the political spectrum. So....instead of the tail wagging the dog as you suggest, what we have actually seen is a dog with a *choice* of tails it might wag on a given issue. If the Greens wouldn't back a measure, then Labour would rely on United and even ACT or NZ First to get it through. The final result was law passed by a REAL majority of MPs elected by a REAL majority of all voters.
This is far superior to First Past the Post. Every time.