I keep seeing comments from folk distressed at the low turnout for council elections, said to be one of the lowest on record.* "The goal for all elections should be to make sure turnout is high" bewailed one political tragic. "It's good for democracy," he whimpered.
A high turnout is "good for democracy"? Is it? Is it really?
Those who care enough about the candidates to vote are already voting. And those who don't care, aren't. What's so bad about that?
What is clear is that few enough -- only 36% of those who bothered to enrol -- actually do care. But what's not clear to me is this: why would you want people voting who don't really care.
Because that's what it means, isn't it, if you naively insist, like our political tragic, that "low turnout bad -- high turnout good." Boil that down, and what it means is that you want more people voting who don't give a shit.
Why is that good?
And what does it say about the quality of candidates on offer that so few really gave a shit about them?
Answers on a postcard, please.
* Feel free to correct me. I don't care enough to check.
Auckland's voter turnout may match the 2019 record low of 35.3% once special votes are added to the tally later this week.
Updated figures for votes other than specials put the 2022 turnout at 35%, with 400,000 votes cast.
The lowest turnout was in Ōtara at 21.9% and the highest in mainland Auckland was 51% in Warkworth, followed by 46% in Wellsford and 45% in Ōrākei.
4 comments:
The next proposal will be to go Aussie style and criminalise people for not voting - and it is obvious that the impact this has on the quality of government in Australia is ....
I agree entirely. If you don't care, and/or can't ascertain any differences between candidates on the issues that matter to you, why on earth is it a good thing for you to cast an arbitrary vote?
That most folk did not vote is democracy in action
Agree, Peter, although there is one procedural issue here. Pauline and I wanted to vote in both Marlborough Sounds and in Christchurch Central - because we wanted to try and get the Voices for Freedom candidates in LOL :)
Marlborough proved easy as voting papers arrived in the post. Christchurch was an incompetent mess: we were there a week before voting closed. There were no voting papers. On investigation our address wasn't registered - new to me - so we registered online. Papers still didn't arrive. We queried - and that process is nonsense - and were supposed to go into a post office etc. However, we were also there for a funeral, and so ran out of time, but the nature of the process via postal vote, non existent addresses 'in the system' etc knocked us out. The chief electoral officer couldn't get her postal papers. They do need to look at process. If there had been an online vote we would have made an informed vote in Christchurch Central.
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