What People Are Saying

Thresholds should increase to 7.5% of party votes. This eliminates the very minor parties whose only influence is achieved by siding with a major party.
Mike Demler
15 hours 1 min ago
The 5% threshold needs to be reduced. 4.9% is a lot of voters that don't get representation. Make the threshold 1% to have one representative.
Andy Nicholson
15 hours 10 min ago
MPs who get into Parliament on an electoral seat should NOT be able to bring other list MPs into Parliament on their coat tails unless they cross the 5% threshold for the party vote. This is not proportional representation.
Simon Hugh Moore
15 hours 27 min ago
I cannot subscribe to one successful candidate bringing in with him/her a further 5. This is simply unfair to voters, especially since there have been deals done between parties viz the Epsom seat.
Shelagh Coop
15 hours 29 min ago
It is list seats that create democracy, I think therefore that reducing the number of MP in seats and increasing the number of list MP is the way to go.
John Henning Eide
15 hours 40 min ago
By elections. Who a Party puts up as its candidate should be a Party decision. Restrictions will distort how Parties select their candidates. Dual Candidacy should stay as it is. Any restrictions would totally distort which candidates parties put up for electorate seats.
Hugh Fletcher
15 hours 49 min ago
I think that the party vote threshold and the voting options can discourage people from voting for the party they believe best represents them. Not wanting their vote to be wasted can make people vote for a party that is not their first choice. I think a way that this could be solved is by including another section on the voting form that allows the voter to vote for a second party. This second vote would only be counted if their first choice party does not reach the threshold. This would significantly reduce the number of wasted votes and be much more democratic than just ignoring votes for a party that does not reach the threshold.
Tim Vautier
17 hours 15 min ago
Dual candidacy is not an issue. Parliament could miss out on good members if parties cannot place a list MP candidate into a constituent poll.
P. Morris
18 hours 49 min ago
My issue is with list candidates who I feel don't have a mandate from the public to be in office. It seems unbelievable that you can have "leaders" of party who haven't even won a seat so have no area to represent and if the party gets over 5% then they drag who ever else in no matter how many votes that individual achieved.
Rebecca Curgenven
18 hours 53 min ago
With overhang, as the party has been able to win local electorates, the status-quo should remain. Overhang is a quirk of the system, but one that can be lived with.
Elliott Campbell
18 hours 55 min ago
Instead of a list, choose "top-up" MPs from that party's losing electorate candidates who achieved the highest % of electorate votes in their respective electorates. This will ensure all candidates are incented to work hard for EVERY vote and there will be no perceived safe or "un-removable" candidates.
Matthew Blair
19 hours 24 min ago
In 2011 I voted for my second choice party because I wasn’t certain my first choice party would reach the threshold. This type of voting sends the wrong message. Everybody should be able to accurately state their party preference and always have their vote count.
Scott Chaplow
19 hours 26 min ago
Candidates should stand either for : electorate or list, they should not have dual standings as this is double dipping to me.
Beulah Mare
19 hours 49 min ago
Dual candidacy- as has happened recently in the Otaki electorate where there have been two very able and well respected candidates - only one could gain the electorate seat with the other still becoming on MP on the list and making a valuable contribution to the House.
Ian Basire
19 hours 55 min ago
I think its important that the threshold for getting list MPs in should be lowered slightly to reduce the number of wasted votes. The 'back door' of getting the full allocation of MPs for winning an electorate seat leads to pre-election deals being made against that manipulate the electorate and place greater weight on certain electorates and the influence of voters in them.
Nick Koirala
20 hours 54 min ago
If "coat-tailing" is stopped I would like to see the threshold dropped to three percent to ensure smaller parties have a presence in Parliament. If we ever get back to the 80 % voter turnouts again it would take about 120,000 votes to reach the five percent threshold. This would pose a significant barrier for new parties.
John Lykles
22 hours 25 min ago
10% or three seats could be a reasonable way to recognize party strength. Too many one man electorates distort the system, giving senior positions to a person with limited local strength and no national support.
Robert S Harrison
22 hours 51 min ago
Dual candidacy should definitely be kept. How could you deny someone a place in parliament who lost an electorate seat by a handful of votes yet who occupies a high enough place on the list to make it into the chamber? They have hardly been disenfranchised by voters in their electorate. This would return us to a winner takes all which is not the purpose of MMP.
Greg Meylan
23 hours 1 min ago
Proportionality needs to be maintained in situations where a party’s electoral seats are greater than its overall share of the vote – thus apportioning extra seats to other parties to rebalance the proportional vote, even at the cost of an overhang, would be an excellent step.
Matthew Wilcox
23 hours 50 min ago
I think that the ability to bypass the 5% threshold with an elected geographic MP has caused a lot of the gaming that has occurred in the previous few elections. I definetly thnk this rule should be removed.
Kevin Maloney
1 day 1 min ago
I feel that a party being elligible for list seats if it gains an electorate seat is leading to a situation where the voters in a single electorate have more effect on the make up of parliament than voters in others. This is counter to the principal of proportionality.
Jamie Kitchin
1 day 8 hours ago
The threshold should be reduced to 4%. This was the original recommendation and I believe it is high enough to represent a significant number of voters, yet not so high as to make it difficult for emerging parties to gain representation in the House. We have MMP to provide diversity of values and ideals.
Jeremy Maseyk
1 day 10 hours ago
A great many people are saying that he most unfair thing about the current MMP rules is the way ACT and United Future get into parliament with just one constituency seat If we have a five percent threshold for list MP’s there should be a five percent threshold for constituency MP’s as well. Five percent equals six MP’s in a 120 MP parliament. If there is a five percent threshold, it should take at least six constituency MP’s for a party to get in to Parliament.
Nicholas Cobbett
1 day 14 hours ago
I consider that winning an electorate seat should not entitle a party to any seats so that the only criterion for election is the percentage gained in the party vote and that the threshold percentage should be lowered to the equivalent of 3 MPs.
Johanna Vroegop
1 day 14 hours ago
How can voters be expected to know everyone on all the party lists to make a proper judgement. It would be chaotic and unfair. However, if I was a paid-up member of a political party, I would like to have a say in the order of my political party's list.
Jack Thomas
1 day 15 hours ago
question the need for list MPs. Their votes could be given to the party leaders, for them to vote as proxies. The exception would be where a party has reached the 5% theshold, but does not have an electorate MP. Apart from this, the list MPs seem only to be needed to make up Select Committees.
Kevin Mooney
1 day 16 hours ago
List candidates should be selected on the basis of the number of votes that they win so that unpopular candidiates are not elected.
Guy Crozier
1 day 17 hours ago
The principle of proportionality is vastly more important than any other consideration in our electoral system.
Will Radford-Howell
1 day 17 hours ago
I cannot see a problem with dual candidacy. My electorate of Manurewa did not not elect, Cam Calder as its electorate MP. That is no reason why he should not be acceptable to the rest of the country as an MP. Manurewa voters have a democratically elected electorate MP to represent them. National Party voters have a democratically elected list MP to represent them. What could be fairer?
Jeanette Dowling
1 day 17 hours ago
The overhang should remain and extra balance seats should be added to retain proportionality.
Richard Love
1 day 18 hours ago

MMP Review

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This year we all get the opportunity to have a say on changes we'd like to see on the way our MMP voting system works.

This review comes out of the 2011 Referendum on the Voting System, when the majority of voters chose to keep MMP as our voting system.

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