The results are in and with a voter turnout of 41 percent, New Zealand citizens proved to be a lot more enthusiastic than many predicted. Here in Christchurch, Bob Parker was the clear winner. Parker was pictured on the front of this morning’s Press—alongside his disproportionately hot wife—grinning broadly over the favorable results. Always gracious in defeat, 2021 candidate Megan Woods had this to say, "Bob started with a massive advantage that he was a known name. If you look at the results across the city you can see it is name recognition that is important.''
Yes, Megan it’s all about the name. With the backing of the same party that’s held the mayoralty for the past 8 years you never had a fighting chance against this mediocre television presenter who hasn’t even had work in the industry for over a decade. His massive advantage was so painfully unfair! Either that or you’re a naturally unlikable woman whose performance in the debates was so rigid it made street cleaner Mark Ross’s broken similes and nervous, eyes-to-the-ground demeanor look positively charismatic in comparison. With competition like you it’s no wonder turnout was so poor (albeit less poor than predicted)

But back to that very topic: voter turnout. Once you take a look at the stats it’s hard to see how someone with any sense of perspective could be as enthusiastic as Mr. Parker was. After learning the results Parker was [to quote The Press], “thrilled by the clear majority and said it proved Christchurch residents were pleased with the way council was performing.”
Well in my opinion it proves no such thing, Bob. With a turnout of about 41% Parker got around 46%. This means roughly 18.86% of Christchurch voters gave Parker their support, a result that wouldn’t exactly have me in a state of euphoria if I were campaigning to capture the hearts and minds of Christchurch’s citizens…If I were just another bloodsucking politician however…

The thing is, whenever someone in the media or a public official addresses the issue of voter apathy it’s always (non)voters who are to blame, not politicians. Says Local Government Minister Mark Burton [according to Stuff]

“Mr. Burton said ways needed to be found to encourage people to participate, because it seemed many people did not understand the issues.”

We don’t understand the issues? Last time I checked our choices were:

A TV presenter, incapable of clarifying a position not prefaced with ‘We should look in to’ or ‘seriously consider’ or ‘more closely analyze’;
Megan Woods, who was hoping to continue the rein of incompetence initiated by her predecessor Gary Moore;
Jo Giles (City Vision, ‘nuf said).

After that there was a street cleaner, several under- qualified socialists, a neo-Nazi, Paulus Telfer who was interested in ‘unleashing community crime fighters’ and Michael Hansen who was concerned with some kind of laser that kept stinging him. Hansen was wise enough to remind citizens that voting isn’t compulsory. Thanks Mike.

Oh, but it’s not the council's fault that nobody finds their self-promotion nearly as interesting as they do. It’s all us. We just need to be better informed. We just don’t see how important they or the issues they’re concerned with really are. And of course it’s not just the mayoral candidates. It’s the council as a whole as well. One only needs to look at the winners to get a clear picture of just why citizens are so uninterested in local politics. Let’s take my electorate, Fendalton-Waimairi as a quick case study. Who did voters decide were the best of the bunch this year?

For the ward, we reelected Sally Buck. Sally loves recycling, public [council] ownership and trees but hates gambling and brothels. She comes 1st. No fun for Fendalton-Waimairi for the next 3 years then I guess. After her we gave a spot to Mike Wall of Independent Citizens. Mike has had animal experience; he’s currently a board member on the Orana Park Wildlife Trust. He is also a board member of the Christchurch Citizens Advice Management Team. So basically I have no idea what he does for a living.

Speaking of Independent Citizens, they cleaned house in F-W’s Community Board this year except for poor Graham Evans who just lost out to 2021’s Faimeh Burke, probably on account of the creepy grin.

Sorry Graham but this is the suburbs; you’ll have to try a little harder than that! We elected Val Carter who represents the board on the Christchurch Beautifying Society AND the Keep Christchurch Beautiful Committee! One thing’s for sure, she sure likes pretty! Speaking of pretty we also elected young up-and-comer Jamie Gough to the board. Jamie believes in “incentives not disincentives, rewarding go-getters, encouraging forward thinking, supporting strong communities and preserving our heritage.” Finally a politician who’s willing to really stick it to those pro-disincentive, go getter-punishing, regressive-thinking advocates who are actively campaigning on that damn heritage-crushing platform. It’s about time someone took a clear stand on that because I’m tired of people who dodge such polarizing issues with broad sweeping statements that could mean anything.

I wouldn’t be so hard on Jamie Gough if it weren’t for the fact that he’s 22 at most. At that age I’ve got nothing against you running for office but you shouldn’t actually be trying to win! You have so many years ahead of you. Isn’t it a little early to be getting so jaded and cynical? Couldn’t you have at least waited until your 30s before running on such an ambiguous platform? Isn’t this supposed to be the time in your career when you run on a transparent, idealistic, brutally honest platform with the notion that people will respond to honesty and earnestness as opposed to false promises and meaningless blanket statements only to have your spirits crushed when they vote overwhelmingly for some old career politician who spent his whole campaign spouting meaningless blanket statements and making false promises he has not intention or ability to keep? Aren’t you meant to lose to him at least three times before you decide to become that guy? Depressing.

Then there’s Andrew Yoon who, while not being a total libertarian, actually isn’t that bad. If Yoon had managed to put the sentence, “I am concerned about the economic and social environment in New Zealand and the level of dependency on the state” in his paragraph-long blurb in that pamphlet I read through before the election I might have actually voted for him. Silly bugger.

But still, it’s not them. It’s us. Local politics is so uninspiring that even when there are weeks to decide and voting is done through the post, significantly fewer than half of the population vote and we’re the ones who need a boot up the ass. What’s one of their proposals…go on…guess…

“Some local government politicians have previously advocated making voting compulsory – similar to Australia, where it appeared to work well.” [From stuff]

Oh Christ and you know it’s only a matter of time, don’t you? What do they mean “it appeared to work well” anyway? When voters have a gun to their head turnout tends to go up? No shit. People tend to be more likely to do things when they’re forced to; it isn’t rocket science. That doesn’t make it right. It’s important for voters to have the right to apathy. If all of the candidates suck, apathy is important. With apathy, even the guy who wins knows that a minority of people are impressed by him. I like to think it keeps politicians grounded, at least to a degree. I’ll go one step further: I think it’s irresponsible to vote if you don’t actually like any of the candidates. It’s tantamount to lying. A vote is an endorsement—why on earth would you endorse someone you don’t like? Because the other guy’s worse? You can’t say that on the voting form and if you do it won't go on record. A vote contributes towards a percentage and that percentage is taken to mean the amount of support each candidate has. Simple as that.

“If you didn’t vote you can’t complain about the results!” Well, the 1,363 words of incessant whingeing above beg to differ. More and more every day complaining seems to be the only valuable thing reasonable people have left in the world of local politics. We shouldn’t give that up. Apathy is a statement; embrace it!