Tuesday evening, 4 November in New Zealand. In several hours the polls will open in the eastern USA to start the US presidential election. After nearly 2 years of pre-campaigning, fund raising, primaries, fund raising, conventions, fund raising, campaigning, fund raising, debates, fund raising, speeches, fund raising, campaigning down to the wire, and, well, fund raising, the world gets its answer.
Whether or not America wants change, the world certainly does.
This is my third US presidential election in NZ. My first was the Bush-Gore election in 2000, then the Bush-Kerry election in 2004, and now the McCain-Obama election this year. It has been interesting watching from afar with a certain sense of anticipation and detachment. We all know the outcome of that first election and how it introduced the word “chad” to the global vocabulary. The second election literally shocked many here in NZ considering the revelations about the lead-up to the Iraq war (”How could they re-elect him? He lied to them?”) and George W.’s rather, shall-we-say, cavalier attitude towards pretty much every other country on earth. I wonder if the hit rate for the 22nd Amendment on Wikipedia has gone up recently.
What is probably less well known (and anticipated) globally and certainly I suspect within America is that we are now also just 3 and half days away from the polls opening on NZ’s triennial national elections. True to form, New Zealand holds the election on Saturday. Everyone can take a leisurely stroll to our local polling place, cast our paper ballot, and then head off to the cafe for a chat, a latte, and some scones and still have plenty of time for our shopping and other errands before the rugby/cricket/netball/Formula 1 that evening. Or bad imported American television. Or bad imported British television, which always sounds good because of the accents.
The national government has a single House of Representatives comprised of about 120 Members of Parliament or MPs. The MPs vote to select the Prime Minister from the party able to garner a majority of MP votes. That can be quite tricky because in New Zealand we use a system called “Mixed Member Proportional” or MMP. What does that mean? It means that each person gets two votes: one for their local MP to represent his/her district and one for a political party. About half of the MPs are elected directly to represent districts. The other half come from proportional allocation of the MMP party vote modified by whether or not a party gets an MP directly elected from a district. That means that every party literally has a list that determines who gets sent to Parliament based on the party vote. The Prime Minister is always #1 on a Party list, although they seem to usually get directly elected from a district anyways.
Unlike the USA, New Zealand lacks a 22nd Amendment. Heck, New Zealand lacks a constitution, so the Prime Minister can hold office ad infinitum, although I think three-and-out or less tends to be more the rule rather than the exception. Helen Clark, the current Labour (think ever-so-subtlety more left Democrats) Prime Minister, is seeking her fourth 3-year term. However NZ voters seem to be in the mood for a change. Polls show the National Party (think kinder, gentler Republicans) led by John Key ahead overall. Not enough for a clear majority, however. They will need to find one or more partners to form a government. Trouble is, the Greens appear to hold third place and already signaled their preference to form a government with Labour. Then there is New Zealand first, who have historically done as well as the Greens, but whose leader the National Party will not work with. Peter Dunne, head of the United Future party and a Minister of Cabinet in the current Labour government, already announced his preference for National. The Maori party could go either way last I heard. Mix in Act (1 or 2 MPs) for National, and the Progressives (1 or 2 MPs) for Labour and – voila – we get an exciting race to watch, sans chads.
There’s been a bit of a debate about MMP this time round, with some advocating a return to the First-Past-the-Post majority-rules system. MMP, they argue, dilutes the governments too much and can give minor parties too much power. Coming from the either-or, Republican-Democrat system in the USA, I find it rather refreshing and downright democratic.
The other merciful feature of the New Zealand system is that the campaign lasts about 4 weeks tops, not counting some mild electioneering during the preceding few months or so. Like the Saturday voting, all very civilised and rationale.
Such excitement. What’s a person to do? If you were me, then you’d be BitTorrenting the remaining episodes of Season 4 of Grey’s Anatomy for the wife and yourself to enjoy. With all the weighty matters of the world swirling about, it is good to periodically escape to a place where the major concern centers around the tumultuous relationship of our heroine and her McDreamy…