In my understanding, a truly free and fair democratic system needs to be open to everyone desiring to participate and, regardless of their standing in life, have a level playing field whereby all candidates have an equal opportunity to reach every voter with their views and policies.
Also, every vote must count, and it's quite clear that with MMP as it currently stands, this is not the case - more on this later.
Firstly, I clearly recall that from this year's Local Government Elections, some candidates did not have an equal opportunity to have their message heard.
This was because they did not have the same access to resources as others and billboards are only allowed on private property, thus the political sympathies of those property owners dictate whose billboards will be visible to passing voters. Is this fair?
Secondly, the electoral process is governed by law, and overseen by public servants to ensure elections are ostensibly free, fair and transparent.
But are they? Currently candidates must use their own resources or donations in order to provide the basics of any election campaign, such as billboards, advertisements, hire of halls, stationery, etc.
This gives better resourced candidates a considerable advantage, better able to afford advertising their message, even though their policies might be worse than those lesser resourced.
Thirdly, the candidate profile booklet accompanying every voting paper had a 150-word limit on written profiles. How can candidates possibly adequately inform voters on their policies and personal details in 150 words?
Is it any wonder there is such a disconnect between voters and candidates? Anecdotally, many voters don't vote because they a) don't know enough about the candidates and b) aren't given enough policy details to make an informed decision.
A contributory factor to the low voter turnout perhaps? We're often told the only way to get our message to voters is door-knocking and meet-and-greet, but that limits candidacy to those who have time and resources to do this, precluding most with a full-time job, business or farm.
Public media could partially fill this gap, fulfil their social obligations by publicising candidate information and policies as broadly as possible, gratis, in the public interest. To their credit, Hawke's Bay Today did an excellent job in this regard.
In my view one possible solution is for central government to resource each candidate up to a pre-determined limit, which should be the only funds allowed towards candidate expenses, i.e. no other donations allowed, which would ensure a truly level playing field.
Back to MMP - on the whole it seems like an equitable system, except for one thing; the 5% threshold for a party to get into parliament with party votes, which is long overdue for a review. The threshold should be lowered to the average number of votes an electorate seat receives in an election.
What is manifestly unfair is that a candidate such as Peter Dunne or David Seymour can to get into parliament by winning one electorate seat with a party vote of less than one percent, compared to a party not winning an electorate seat, but gaining say three percent of party votes.
Effectively those votes are wasted, and don't count. With voter participation in national elections also declining, and over 25% of registered voters not voting in the 2014 election, it is becoming more and more important that every vote does count, and is represented in parliament. That will be the only kind of democracy which will be truly free, fair and equitable.
Therefore if election results are to remain credible into the future, central government needs to address these shortcomings, failing which our political system is in danger of degenerating into the same type of circus as the USA.
Do we want that?
Dan Elderkamp is an anti-Ruataniwha dam campaigner, who was unsuccessful in his bid for a seat on the Hawke's Bay Regional Council in the October local government elections.
