Pastors Pen 30th August 2020

The Elections are looming

NZ voting day has now been moved to Saturday Oct 17, with early voting possible from Monday to Friday during the 2 weeks prior.

Who will you be voting for? Have you decided yet?

This website gives you a list of the registered parties for the 2020 election

https://elections.nz/democracy-in-nz/political-parties-in-new-zealand/register-of-political-parties/

From here you can click on each party’s website to see how they compare on policies like housing, immigration, education, health, law and order, jobs, economy, environment, and ‘Auckland’

So how does voting work? In a NZ general election, every voter gets two votes: an electorate vote and a party vote.  Parties compete to win as many electorate votes and party votes as they can. To get any seats in Parliament, a party needs to win at least 5% of the party vote or win an electorate seat. Your electorate vote goes to the candidate you most want to represent the area you live in (your electorate). Each party chooses candidates to stand for election in electorates. The candidates with the most votes in each electorate become ‘electorate MPs’.

Your party vote goes to the party you most want to represent you. The share of the party votes that each party gets decides how many candidates from their party list become MPs. A party list is a list ranked in the order the party wants its candidates to be elected. Candidates elected to Parliament from a party list are called ‘list MPs’. Because our voting system is proportional, the share of the party vote a party gets largely reflects the share of seats they get in Parliament.

We will also be voting on 2 referendums: The End of Life Choice Act 2019, and the Cannabis Legalisation and Control referendum. In Google, type in “vote.nz” and scroll down to “referendums.”

I hope this helps ????????