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.)
