New Zealand politics are, in my experience, just as convoluted and crazy-making as American politics, but I have to say the experience of voting is a lot simpler. I enrolled online several months ago, I got a voting card in the mail last week, and yesterday I walked myself down the road to my local primary school through the intoxicating Wellington spring sunshine, showed my card, got my ballots, and made three checkmarks with a big orange highlighter. I got a sticker that says “Yes, I’ve voted” on my way out.
Permanent residents get to vote here, and I’ve tried to take the responsibility of that privilege seriously and try to educate myself about the political parties and systems. It’s not like in America where elections happen on the first Tuesday of the month every four years—national elections are every three years here but the majority party can call them pretty much whenever during that third year. (This year there was a lot of commentary about the timing of the election being after the Rugby World Cup, common wisdom being that if the All Blacks won the Cup, which they did, then the National Party would stay in power, which they did as of last night). As far as I can tell there aren’t primaries to decide who will run (they say ‘stand’ here) for Prime Minister; the Prime Minister is just automatically the leader of whatever party gets the majority. Political parties can’t advertise until a couple weeks before the election, and it’s actually illegal to promote any political party the day of the election, even on Facebook or Twitter; Friday night there was a lot of posts along the ‘Okay it’s five minutes till midnight so this is my last chance to EXHORT EVERYONE TO VOTE LABOUR TOMORROW!!!!!!!!!” You can enroll to vote online up to the day before the election, simple as.
Ooh, also, and for me this is a big one, there’s more than two parties here. There are some sort of comedy parties like the Pirate Party and the Legalise Cannabis party (which actually do make it on the ballot) but there are some significant minority parties like the Greens and the odious New Zealand First and they can make coalition governments with whatever big party gets closest to the majority. I still don’t understand MMP very very well but I like that it allows for more truly proportional representation, and also allows you to vote a bit more strategically…like, you might not think that your alternative party will actually get a majority of the votes but you can be a bit more sure that you might get
The biggest difference for me, though, between voting in the States and voting in New Zealand was just…how low key it was. Voting day is on a Saturday but you can vote early if you want to. No ID requirements at the poll, no state laws disenfranchising people who just happen to be poor and young and brown, just a coincidence I’m sure, who tend to vote a bit more liberal. No questionable voting machines, just a couple pieces of paper and an orange highlighter. No pages and pages of initiatives, just three questions: which party do you want to be in charge; which person do you want to represent you as your Member of Parliament, and should we keep MMP or not? So simple and easy, so straightforward.
I opted to go to a gig last night instead of yelling at the TV as the results rolled in, but of course everyone had their phones out the entire time checking the news, and I’m sorry to say that New Zealand did not go the way I wanted it to in terms of the majority party, although the alternative party I voted for did get substantial votes so we’ll have some more MPs in Parliament. There’s been a lot of talk about how the voter turnout was the lowest since 1880, and a lot of angsty chatter amongst my lefty friends here in the nation’s capital about the apathy of Middle New Zealand. I’m not happy with the results and quite concerned about what the next three years will look like for health and social services, for a start.
Several Americans of my acquaintance have asked why I would be unhappy about National’s win when the conservative parties here are, like, WAY to the left of the Democrats in the US. It’s hard to explain. It’s not that I don’t follow American politics, or care about American politics, or tear my hair/gnash my teeth about American politics, or that American politics don’t affect me, it’s not that at all. And it’s also true that in a lot of ways, New Zealand is still rather like a socialist workers’ paradise—I mean, to be labeled a communist in the US all you have to do is to support universal healthcare, and here that’s bog standard, that’s not even an issue. I have a lot, politically and in all other ways, to be grateful for in this country regardless of who sits in Parliament.
What happens here affects me directly every day, and I just don’t feel like “Oh, well, compared to the States we have it just FINE!” is a good enough response to…well, to anything. I still kind of can’t even believe that I get to vote in New Zealand—so of course I’m going to care. I am still going to want to express my values politically, regardless of where I actually live; I’ll be voting absentee in the States next year as well. I’d like to think I have the capacity to participate in whatever system will have me, whichever I am connected to. I’d like to think I have the capacity to care about a lot of different things, in a lot of different places. I’d like to think it matters.
So, yes. I’ve voted.