[Image: Electoral Commission]
Sandra Goudie is the former mayor of Thames-Coromadel and former National member of Parliament for Coromandel.
Here she brings attention to an aspect of our electoral system, which could see your party vote allocated to a party you didn’t for.
“Giveaway votes – in 2020 the ‘giveaway vote’ was 7.9% of the total ‘party vote’ cast.
That 7.9% party vote came from the 12 minor parties who were unsuccessful, but still managed to garner 225,182 party votes between them. The smallest was HeartlandNZ with 914 votes.
What happened to those 7.9% party votes? They were apportioned on a pro rata basis to the successful parties. This meant Labour scored an extra 5 seats from the party votes cast for all the minor parties. National scored an extra 3 seats from those same party votes cast.”
Sandra Goudie in Breaking Views
Published: 11 August 2023
From: The Breaking Views Blog