Does New Zealand's Prime Minister really understand how MMP works? In this hard-hitting opinion, Andy Loader challenges National's opposition to strategic vote-splitting and questions the mainstream media's criticism of campaigns encouraging voters to use their two votes strategically. With electoral overhangs permitted under MMP since 1996, Loader asks why politicians and commentators condemn voters for using the very rules Parliament established. Is it democracy in action, or political hypocrisy?
There is an old saying: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and be suspected of being an Idiot rather than opening it wide and confirming it beyond doubt.”
By the time you read this article you will have seen, at least the preliminary, results of the election.
I have left this article till now as I don’t believe that it is right that my opinion should have any influence on the result of the election in relation to the understanding of how MMP works, particularly in relation to some high profile members of the National Party.
The Vote Smart Controversy
In a recent article published online in the Brash & Mitchell website, the author (Claire Deeks) discussed the mainstream media reaction to her “Vote Smart 2026 campaign”, which advocated splitting your vote to try to ensure we got a centre right government, as shown below:
Over the past fortnight, our Vote Smart 2026 campaign has caused something approaching a collective nervous breakdown among sections of New Zealand’s political commentariat. They have had a great deal to say about what sort of people we are. The electoral arithmetic has had to compete for attention.
We’ve been accused of “gaming” the electoral system, “cheating”, undermining democracy and engineering a constitutional crisis. The Post’s Janet Wilson has described the behaviour of vote-splitting advocates as “nihilistic entitlement” and “morally dubious” and the controversy as a “grenade into the guts of democracy”.
Commentator Simon Wilson has called RCR “far-right provocateurs”, described us as a haven for “anti-vaxxers, racists, misogynists, climate denialists and other far-right conspiracists”, and accused those involved in the overhang campaign of conspiring to manipulate the election.
Bryce Edwards, director of the Democracy Project and publisher of Democracy Briefing, has said organised efforts to engineer an overhang “deserve condemnation”.
The Post’s political editor Henry Cooke described the Don Brash advertorial we ran as “pushing right-wing voters to game the system by creating an overhang”. When challenged, he clarified: “splitting your vote is not gaming the system. Intentionally campaigning to create a disproportionate overhang is.”
Meanwhile, veteran journalist Richard Harman introduced us to readers of POLITIK with the headline “The anti-vaxers trying to skew the vote”, while the publication’s Facebook page described us as “nutty” and an “anti-vax mob”.
Former Labour MP Lianne Dalziel has been searching for our “shadowy backers”, while Jonathan Milne has contemplated the possibilities of billionaire-funded political influence and hidden election spending.
This is hardly new territory. The Otago Daily Times previously ran an unsigned editorial headed “‘Cancer’ undermining democracy”. Having quoted the description, it added: “Indeed”.
Such a lovely collection of descriptions from people who profess great concern about the tone and integrity of public discourse.
With all the newspaper columns, radio segments and television reports dedicated to questioning our motives, our character and our supposed threat to democracy, you might reasonably assume that something truly extraordinary had happened.
Perhaps we’d been caught tampering with ballot papers. Or discovered a way to vote three times. Or persuaded the Electoral Commission to abandon the rules and make up some new ones just for us.
But no. We’ve been explaining that New Zealanders have two votes under MMP, showing how those votes work, and encouraging people to consider using them strategically. The horror.
Do They Understand MMP?
The scariest part of this whole debate regards MMP and splitting the vote, is that we have seen that even the current Prime Minister and a past Prime Minister have confirmed by their own admissions that they don’t truly understand how MMP works or the rules for voting under MMP.
Somebody should have read that old saying to them before they started to campaign for two votes for National.
The Rules of Overhang
The rules under MMP since it was introduced in 1996 are that the party vote determines a qualifying party’s proportional entitlement to seats in Parliament and the electorate vote determines who represents a particular electorate. However, if a party wins more electorate seats than its party vote would ordinarily entitle it to, it retains those electorate MPs and Parliament expands to accommodate them. That increase in the total number of seats in the parliament is called the overhang.
This is not a loophole in the Electoral Act, but has been part of MMP since New Zealand adopted the system in 1996. Overhangs have occurred before. The rules are public. Parliament knows they exist. And voters are entitled to split their votes.
The main objection to the various campaigns for splitting votes seems to be that deliberately organising voters to produce an overhang can give a political bloc more seats than its combined party-vote share would otherwise deliver.
The media seem to be making assertions that this is somehow unlawful or wrong, but in fact this is a part of the rules for an MMP election under the current rules. Every voter is given the right to have two votes; one electorate vote and one party vote.
A Media Double Standard?
The Media seems to have been drawing some type of difference between each voter splitting their vote as they are entitled to do under the law, and organisations such as “Vote Smart” and “Split Your Vote” explaining how you can split your vote and create an overhang which may help achieve a certain type of government.
The media seem to believe that individuals are just doing what the law allows (registering their voting options), yet when people organised a campaign to explain the ability to split your votes such as was set up by Harry Mowbray and Claire Deeks, this suddenly became a dangerous threat to democracy.
Questions were asked about where the money was “really coming from” and comments were made by some members of the media, describing aspects of the vote-splitting campaign as “morally dubious”, invoking “nihilistic entitlement”, and presenting the campaigns as an “undemocratic sideshow” and a potential “democratic crisis”.
It seems they believe that an individual using the rules strategically is legitimate democracy but organising others to pursue the same lawful electoral outcome is something politicians ought to condemn. I would genuinely like to know where they draw the line.
The Rules Are the Rules
Parliament has had ample opportunity to address overhangs. The Electoral Commission’s 2012 review and the Independent Electoral Review in 2023 considered changes to the treatment of overhangs. The provisions allowing overhangs remain. Invoking the “spirit of MMP” does not create an additional electoral rule that voters are obliged to follow.
For this election, the rules are the rules Parliament has in place. If they produce consequences Parliament considers unacceptable, Parliament can change them for future elections through the proper process. What voters cannot reasonably be expected to do is treat an available electoral choice as forbidden because some people have decided it should be.
National's Own Confusion
Harry Mowbray an influential NZ business man and his family (acknowledged as significant financial supporters of the National Party) have set up a website to explain the rules around splitting your vote under MMP and how that may influence the result of the election, yet we have seen the National Party, its current Prime Minister and a recent past Prime Minister all saying the opposite to what the Mowbray’s were recommending.
Their opposition to his website culminated in the National Party complaining to the NZ Electoral Commission about his website, but in fact it was found that what he was saying on that website was what was allowed under the electoral act.
Their opposition to his and other websites in relation to vote splitting merely confirmed National’s own misunderstanding of the rules of elections related to vote splitting and the possible outcomes from that vote splitting.
Surely they understand that first you must win a majority to achieve anything at all and that as long as it is within the rules then that is OK. After all as I have said before second sucks, you’re just the first loser!