John MacDonald: Stick with MMP, but change this one thing

"Come back first-past-the-post, all is forgiven."

I reckon there’ll be people thinking or saying exactly that, with all this toing and froing over vote splitting.

We’ve got supporters of the right bloc in parliament running their campaign. And, on the left, we’ve got Te Pāti Māori telling its supporters to just vote for them in the electorate vote and give their party vote to either Labour or the Greens.

Which means we’ve got the left and the right exploiting the MMP rules to get the overhang. Which leaves us with more than 120 MPs in Parliament.

But you’ve got to remember that exploitation of some sort happens whatever the voting system. All rules can be exploited.

Back in the day, when we had first-past-the-post, parties would exploit the system by standing candidates in areas they didn’t live in.

They might have had a high profile or whatever and been voted in because of that. Denying all the genuine local candidates the chance to represent the area where they do live.

So I don’t think getting rid of MMP is the answer. But I do think something needs to change.

Especially when you look at this carry-on with the centre-right crowd, which is getting all the attention. Because the crew with all the money is running this campaign, telling people to give ACT and NZ First their party vote to create the overhang and get more centre-right MPs in Parliament.

The National Party is furious.

But its leader Christopher Luxon has said that, if he forms the next government, he’ll have a referendum on the MMP voting system. He might be even more gung-ho about that now, considering he’s saying that he wants as many National MPs as possible around the Cabinet table.

I think too that, after what we’re seeing this campaign, voters will have more of an appetite for a referendum than they might have when Luxon floated the idea a couple of months back.

Fun fact: MMP has been around for 30 years and, during that time, we’ve had five overhangs.

Which means every second election there’s been an overhang. Every second election, we’ve ended up with more than 120 MPs in parliament.

So, let’s assume we end up with an overhang again after this election. It won’t actually be all that unusual.

But, in a country where people like to complain about the number of MPs, and even some political parties claim they want fewer MPs in parliament, how can anyone look at what’s going on and think that it’s just the system?

Which is why I think any sense-check on our voting system would have to be more nuanced than just a referendum asking us if we want to stick with MMP.

I know we can’t stop political parties telling voters what to do. But I think we need to crack down on these third parties doing it.

I think MMP is way better than first-past-the-post. But what we’re seeing with this third-party campaigning is people with money potentially having way too much influence over the election result. And I don’t like it.

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