Your views: Readers' letters

Literary festival

May I congratulate all those involved in organising last weekend's Literary Festival.

I have been involved in many over the years, and this was one of the most enjoyable, both for the variety of speakers and the efficiency, warmth and generosity of the hosts and organisers.

Whanganui should be proud of this biennial event.

ROGER HALL
Auckland

STV works well

Please forgive an outsider (from the UK) joining the discussion, but you should be so lucky in New Zealand to have a voting system as democratic as STV for at least some of your elections. First Past The Post repeatedly leads to the election of representatives and governments by minority votes.

John Carson of Springvale (letters, October 11) objects to Mike Tana's 2016 election victory in Porirua City by STV.

I don't know the candidates or the parties, so I'm completely neutral on their comparative merits, but, from facts given by Mr Carson himself, Mike Tana was clearly the voters' choice and so a worthy winner.

No candidate was supported by a majority of voters in the first round of counting, so neither Euon Murrell (who was leading at that stage) nor any of the other candidates deserved to win.

At the fifth round of counting, Mike Tana had the support of more than half the voters, so he won and rightly so.

Mr Carson was totally wrong to say some voters had more than one vote. The clue is in the name. "STV" stands for "Single Transferable Vote". Each voter has only one (i.e. single) vote, but it is transferable if the voter wishes. That's far better than wasting your vote as happens so often with First Past The Post.

Incidentally, it's quite possible that Mike Tana would have won by First Past The Post anyway. If enough supporters of the other candidates had realised that the best way to defeat Euon Murrell was to vote for Mike Tana, they might have done that, but they would
have had to guess others' voting intentions.

STV removes the guesswork.

ANTHONY TUFFIN
Chichester, UK

STV: the facts

John Carson misunderstands how single-vacancy STV works.

In the Porirua City mayoral election last October, the quota at the first iteration was 6936 (being 13,872 votes divided by 2), which no candidate had attained on the count of first preferences.

Therefore, the lowest-placed candidate, Gordon Marshall, with 342 votes, was eliminated and his votes transferred to the remaining candidates, in accordance with the second preferences shown on the relevant voting papers.

At this point, all 13,872 votes were counted again, the count proceeding as if Marshall had never stood in the first place.

Forty-four votes from Marshall were added to Euon Murrell's 3859 votes, becoming, in effect, new first-preference votes for him, and giving him a new total of 3903 votes.
Fifty-nine votes were added to Mike Tana's 3550 votes, giving him a new total of 3609 votes. One hundred and seventy-two votes were transferred to the other three candidates.

Note that no one's vote has been counted twice; everyone's vote has merely been recounted, taking account of the fact that Marshall has been eliminated from the election.
Sixty-seven of Marshall's supporters did not have a preference between the five remaining candidates, so their votes became non-transferable and dropped out of the count.

With 13,805 votes now in the count, the quota for election was recalculated, as 13,805 / 2 = 6903.

At the fifth iteration, a total of 2262 voters did not have a preference between the remaining two candidates, Murrell and Tana. Their votes dropped out of the count and the quota for election was again recalculated, as 11,610 / 2 = 5805.

When all 13,872 votes were recounted for the final time, Tana had 5887 votes, being 50.71 per cent of the 11,610 votes still in the count, and was therefore properly declared the winner.

I look forward to the day when the Wanganui District Council adopts STV to elect its members.

STEPHEN TODD
Wellington

Meaningful help

Steve Baron's comments in the Wanganui Chronicle on October 12, about the impact problem gambling has on individuals, families and communities are spot on.

But his suggestion that "government, council and other well-meaning individuals and groups are simply deluding themselves that they can help in any meaningful way" is right off the mark.

Pokies are the most harmful form of gambling. They are highly addictive, and approximately two in five regular gamblers on pokie machines experience problems with gambling. Forty per cent of the money lost on these machines comes from people with gambling problems.

The Gambling Act requires councils to have policies in place to regulate the number and location of gambling venues and the number of pokie machines. It also must have regard to the social impacts of gambling when developing and reviewing its gambling venue policies.

The reason for this is quite simple: to control the growth of gambling and minimise the harm. The more pokies in our communities, the more harm, and as they are more often situated in our struggling communities, the money is being lost by those that can least afford it.

This isn't about "individual responsibility"; it's about machines designed to addict.
Our organisation is here to help people whose lives have been ruined by gambling and to advocate for policy that minimises gambling harm; meaningful work that makes a difference.

PAULA SNOWDEN
CEO, Problem Gambling Foundation of New Zealand

Send your letters to: The Editor, Wanganui Chronicle, 100 Guyton St, PO Box 433, Wanganui 4500; or email editor@wanganuichronicle.co.nz