The Change For Transformative Change

Today for most Australian’s the potential of what a vote can represent is lost in political apathy and some could argue that this directly relates to how the leaders of the two main political parties continually compete for the populist vote. This environment is dominated by the media portrayal of our political parties and as a result of this, policies for the long term interests of the country have become secondary to short term wins (Marsh, 2010).

Labour disunity was a huge contributing factor as to why the conservatives were able to dominate from 1951 to 1964. However, there are also other factors that assisted conservative dominance. Whether that be conservative strengths, good timing, the end of austerity or their handle on public opinion, all factors contributed to the dominant years. However, how long the conservatives actually dominated is also a question. Did they dominate for the whole period, or just part of it? The years 1962-1964 question conservative dominance and how labour reunited.

As an extension of Sartori’s two criteria for minor party relevance, a third rule is often highlighted due to Australia’s application of preferential voting on the electoral system. This third rule as quoted by Jaensch (1983, p.21) states that “A minor party can be discounted as irrelevant whenever its preferences

The election campaign in 1964 was a close run contest even though there was a low public approval of the current Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home. The labour party only won a majority of 3 seats. The reason for the decline in support for the Conservative party was because of events and scandals such as the Profumo affair

4. Weakening democracies in New Zealand is coming from voters no longer finding voting to be important anymore. The biggest group

There is a fundamental problem with the democratic process in Canada. This problem is rooted within our electoral system. However, there is a promising solution to this issue. Canada should adopt the mixed-member proportional representation electoral system (MMP) at the federal level if we wish to see the progression of modern democracy. The failure to do so will result in a stagnant political system that is caught in the past and unable to rise to the contemporary challenges that representative democracies face. If Canada chooses to embrace the MMP electoral system it will reap the benefits of greater proportionality, prevent the centralization of power that is occurring in Parliament and among political parties through an increased

The Liberal party won a surprise majority taking ‘184 of the 388 seats and roughly 40% of the popular vote’. After this dramatic election between Liberal ( Justin Trudeau), Conservative (Stephan Harper), NDP (Thomas Mulcaire) and the Green party (Elizabeth May) Justin Trudeau- led his party to victory winning seats in every province and territory across the country

For decades, Canadians have been defending their right to have a fair and open electoral system. Since its creation in 1867, Canada has been proud to call itself a true democratic country, but today there would be many people who disagree with this statement. The Canadian electoral system, which uses First Past The Post (FPTP), has come under scrutiny for not being as fair as it claims to be. Over the past couple of decades, many countries have switched their system to Proportional Representation (PR) or some form of it. Based on successful results in other nations, Canada’s current FPTP system should change to Mixed Member Proportional (MMP), which is a form of Proportional Representation, as it will allow for more fair elections. The intent of this paper is to outline how an electoral reform from First Past the Post to Proportional Representation or Mixed-Member Proportional, will lead to more confidence in the government, more accurate seat-vote percentage, and better overall representation of the population.

The documentary “five days that changed Britain” showed a rarity in the British winner past the post system. Such rarity emerged from the May 6th, 2010 parliamentary elections, which yielded an unexpected hung-parliament. The Conservative party under the leadership of David Cameron failed to attain a Parliamentary majority which meant that a coalition would have to be formed. With no clear winners what ensued would be one of the most remembered political quarrels in British electoral history. Admittingly, regarding what we have been learning in lecture, it's pretty impressive to see a prime example of how the failure of the conservative party to secure an absolute majority in parliament speaks to the steps political parties and leaders must take to ensure a government continues onward despite the challenges. I have

To start with, Mixed Member Proportional electoral system was chosen by the legal voters of New Zealand in a binding referendum that was initially started in 1992, where it obtained an astonishing 85% support. The second electoral referendum was carried out in 1993 and MMP got 54% support. Upon this referendum, New Zealand’s new electoral system was embraced. (The Road to MMP 2012, p. 3) Prior to 1993, the predominantly used electoral system was the First-Past-the-Post system. “Under the FPP system, each voter has one vote and the candidate who receives the most votes

In New Zealand, political party elections for a party or coalition to form and run the government are held every three years. There is a time horizon of three years for an elected political party in government to deliver the services it promised during the campaign in order to guarantee being re-elected in the subsequent election round.

The fact that Labour had suffered an increasing number of electoral defeats was one of the main reasons the party itself sought change. They needed to change in an effort to regain power, since it was evident that their old approach would not be able to achieve this.

Why can’t we, as humans, simply decide what is good the country and what is bad for our country? The young people of our generation complain about having a bad leader, yet they cannot figure out that they themselves are the cause of this. The funny thing is we, as young New Zealanders, cannot accept the fact that we are to stubborn to know that we are slowly stopping to vote altogether. We blame the leaders of New Zealand for doing a poor job of keeping the country intact. Sometimes this is right, but most of the time… it is the the people. Our voting rates have been going down ever so much. According to Elections.org.nz only 1,240,740 people actually voted. Rounding up that is only 1,250,000. That is a bit over a quarter of the New Zealand population! If we want to get anywhere close to the whole country voting we have to bring in compulsory voting. Otherwise we would be left with three quarters of the country unsatisfied with our soon to be leader.

These assertions about critical mass tend to align with New Zealand’s substantive representation discussed earlier in this essay. Since the introduction of MMP in 1996, women have held above 30 percent of parliamentary seats (excluding 2002, with 28 percent) (NZ Parliament, 2014). In this time, significant reform for women’s issues occurred, including the previously mentioned paid parental leave and ‘Working For

The Green and Labour are two of the 16 registered parties for the 2017 election in New Zealand. Each party is promoting its own set of policies to address environmental issues in the country, focusing on water quality and its ownership, air quality, conservation of natural resources and wildlife; and prevention of climate change.