Too many candidates for sensible voting?

Press, 30 August 1977, Page 20

Too many candidates for sensible voting?

By

N. A. GRIFFITH,

secretary of the Political

Renewal Group, an organisation which seeks to arouse greater public interest in national and local politics. Further articles on local government in Christchurch will appear next week.

There is a generalised conviction among Christchurch citizens that the local body elections are democratic, that we can all have our say, and that this is healthy, close to the grassroots, real. But for many people, perhaps almost all of us in metropolitan Christchurch, these are notions full of illusion. Consider the situation of someone voting for the Christchurch City Council. Even though waids have been introduced and people may feel this procedure has simplified choices, genuinely rational voting is virtually impossible. A resident of the East Ward voting at the last election almost three years ago had a total of 82 candidates to choose from. This was the most difficult instance. But the best, or easiest, was little better. The West Ward resident vas faced with 78 to sort out. It is not merely that there is a council and Mayor to elect. The East Ward resident received voting papers for: 4 Mayoral candidates. 11 contenders for 4 East Ward seats on the City Council. 19 standing for nine of the seats on the Drainage Board. 17 seeking six of the Transport Board seats. 14 for seven of the places on the Hospital Board. 11 trying for five of the seats on the Harbour Board. 6 standing for three of the places on the Catchment Board.

There are some ways we use to by-pass the inevitable ignorance most of us must have about who is who, and who is competent or most competent.

We may vote for the party ticket and abdicate -eal decision. If we dislike a person who is standing for many different posts, we could theoretically eliminate up to seven choices immediately. We can vote for “the main ones” and ignore the rest of the boards. Or we can take a stab at it and ruthlessly eliminate the right number of names. Any serious attempt to weigh up candidates is doomed. Most of the material published is virtually straight from the candidates themselves, and one candidate’s policy generalities can so easily be as good as another’s — and get us nowhere.

It is reported by a city official that as voters proceed through the seven issues the informal votes increase. This seems only natural. when one considers the sheer slog involved in making it to the eighty-second candidate. What can be done about such a problem? Along with the unification of metropolitan Christchurch, argued for in earlier articles, there needs to be a simplification of structure of local government. Such simplification is valuable on several grounds, as well as the one being considered here — namely that voters should be able to participate intelligently. There are two broad solutions.

The first is a tiered arrangement such as appears to make good sense in Paparua County, for example. Local communities of interest could elect councils to carry out limited local functions, and these could, in turn, appoint representatives to a central council. The Mayor could be elected by the whole city. Such a system or a variation of it guarantees at least some

genuinely local participation and overcomes some of the remoteness of bigger authorities. The more dramatic and clear-cut simplification is to abolish ad hoc bodies. Christchurch may have been built on a swamp, but this does not obligate us to be unique and elect our own drainage board. There is no necessity for everyone to try to sort out names and pretend we really know who

can and who cannot do the job.

Drainage Board, Transport Board, Hospital Board, Harbour Board and Catchment Board personnel could all be appointed, not elected, but appointed by a central council itself responsible to the grassroots, the voters. If these boards must be elected, and if people must have a say, there is as good a case for electing special boards for Parks and Re-

serves, for the M.E.D., for the museum, for the airport. For anything to change, it seems almost certain that Christchurch people will have to bring about change. The Labour Government failed. The present Government does not want to risk rocking the boat. Until there is radical change and simplification we will go on facing a three yearly round-up of illusory or unmanageable choices.