Names and faces catch local votes over manifesto and vision

In the lead-up to a general election, we scrutinise each party and their policies with meticulous detail. We argue about their respective differences, they paint us a picture of the New Zealand they envisage, they seek to contrast themselves from one another and persuade us why their particular shade is the one our country needs at the time.

And rightly so - these elections affect our lives and our pockets in what can often be monumental ways.

But just as the Government taxes us significantly, so our local council forces rates upon us. The Government spends our money on roads, education, healthcare, social welfare and more; our local council spends our money on roads, parks, galleries, wastewater, the airport and various other community facilities and infrastructure.

Our local government takes our rates and they, just as central government does, gamble with it, embarking on advertising campaigns to attract more and new visitors to our city, seeking a return for Wanganui ratepayers on that investment.

But despite these similarities in the influence of the two different levels of government on our lives, the decisions we make at the respective ballot boxes are vastly different.

When we vote in national elections we face relatively clear choices - distinct parties, with distinct policies. The media and the parties themselves endlessly communicate these policies to us.

But the similarities with local politics do not exist here. Local politics faces far less differentiation, far less policy scrutiny and far more acknowledgement of name and face recognition over manifesto and vision.

This does seem logical. While the two levels of government are similar in their function, they are, indeed, vastly different in their scale.

And it does not mean we never pick good candidates for local office. I personally believe Wanganui made the right decision with its current leadership, for example.

But a voting strategy as uninformed as that in local government elections all around the country cannot guarantee the same success rate of national elections.

Many look back upon the debt-inclining reign of former Wanganui mayor Michael Laws as a grave mistake, for example. The few responses that exist are founded on personality rather than results - "He gave us national exposure"; "He told us what he really thought"; "He didn't take crap from anyone."

One needs only look at the fact that the Local Government Commission's analysis of the 2007 local elections demonstrated that candidates with names early in the alphabet (and therefore higher on the ballot) were up to four per cent more likely to be elected than those with names later in the alphabet.

The fact that our views can be swayed, even marginally, by such innocuous factors as the order of names on the ballot is indicative of a gap in the market of information that would inform our vote.

This gap should be filled by candidates taking on a greater role in expressing their political tendencies in clear terms.

This would not only make the choice for voters clearer and more informed, but it would create voting blocs within the council based on real policy rather than a fractured group of individuals with their own specific pet interests and personal relationships.

Council candidates should not rely on having the nicest smile or the best slogan to win votes. They should rely on ideas and argument - tell us what you will do, and what the practical effect of it will be.

For example, they could be willing to support or oppose - or at least have some opinion on - the policies being enacted by the Government to give us an idea of where they sit on the political spectrum.

The 2010 mayoral candidates' debate was a great example of how this can occur. If 2013's mayoral and council candidates have real policies which they believe in, then they should want to shout them from the rooftops, not keep them within an ever-grinning mouth on a billboard for no one to hear.