The New Zealand elections have been called for November 8, so today I tell you a little about that. On an upcoming episode, I’ll tell you in detail about how this all works, and I’ll also eventually post a video podcast to show you some of what elections are like here.
American citizens living in New Zealand have been actively working on the upcoming US elections, including registering voters and more. It’s great to see—and makes me feel a little inadequate!
I also tell you a bit about the upcoming schedule (no podcasts next week). Please leave a comment, ring my US Listener Line on 206-339-8413, or send an email to arthur{at]amerinzpodcast.com.
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It is a bit odd to me the idea of having people harass you at a polling place much less voting within a church. Both seem very detrimental to the whole voting process. Here in Oregon we have, at least as long as I have been voting, a mail-in only system. I usually vote from my living room and then drop off my sealed ballot at the local elections office.
I wish more places did it via mail or adopted the NZ way of at least having to remove all political signs the day of the vote.
Hey Arthur, I do have a lot of questions, maybe I’m a little dense so may not have caught everything you said. You vote twice on the same ballot for the PM? Is this done in Australia, and UK too? Anyway, it’s interesting but I confusing. I’m sure our system is just as confusing. Thanks for the show and explaining all of this. Very interesting.
Ok I messed up on the earlier comment. Sorry. One I had the wrong URL for my MySpace site. And I had also a lot of errors in my message. Basically I am confused regarding the voting procedure. I’m going to listen to the show again and hope to catch what I may have missed the first time. (wink) Thanks again for the podcast.
Trillian25: New Zealand uses postal balloting for local elections and there’s talk from time to time about extending that to national elections, too. For them, signs must be removed by the deadline day for the elections, and there are fines for failure to do so. This is a VERY good thing!
Kandiland: We don’t vote for the Prime Minister at all (and they don’t in Australia, UK or Canada, either, for example). Instead, we vote for the party we want to form a government, then we vote for our local representative in Parliament. Australia uses a completely different system, and Canada and the UK use a system similar to the way the US House of Representatives is elected.
But I’ll be talking about this more as the campaigns go on, so there’s plenty of time for more questions!