News Jaya

Why some campaigners prefer Supplementary Member over any alternative to MMP

Stuff has reported that the Right has MMP in its sights, and has named National - linked bloggers David Farrar and Cameron Slater as part of the discussions. ACT has yet to decide what electoral system it supports, but it's leader Don Brash publicly supports SM ( Supplementary Member).

Cameron Slater ( aka WhaleOil) does not particularly like list MPs, and does not like First Past The Post (FPP). He prefers the Preferential Voting (PV) system. He was pleased that Maggie Barry won her selection for National on the North Shore on the first ballot ( meaning she got more than 50 percent of the vote), using a similar system to the preferential voting system. [update: the difference to PV is that the lowest polling candidate is dropped and rather than the candidate with the fewest number of votes being eliminated and votes reallocated, the lowest polling candidate is dropped and a new ballot held until a clear winner emerges].

David Farrar calls the campaign a pro SM campaign. Farrar prefers the SM system over FPP, thinks PV is too complicated ( despite telling a select committee of his desire for a preferential ballot to rank electoral systems on the upcoming referendum on the electoral system). He thinks SM and STV (Single Transferable Vote) have some merit">. But he prefers a run off between MMP and SM to decide our electoral system, despite considering that SM is "significantly disproportional".

So both Farrar and Slater, along with campaign leaders have discounted STV and PV as they are complicated and difficult to explain. They don't want to got back to FPP as they quite like that people such as Don Brash can get into Parliament without winning a constituency. So if any electoral system is to run off with MMP (if a majority of voters do not want MMP), it should be the Supplementary Member System .

Hence the campaign - to get that run-off.

Tomorrow or the next day, I`ll be looking at the five electoral systems in more detail, for those who think SM, STV ,FPP,PV and MMP are just strange groupings of letters.