If TPM games MMP, it could spell the end of the Māori seats

Summarised by Centrist

Te Pāti Māori is campaigning for electorate votes rather than party votes, a strategy that could create an overhang Parliament and give the party more MPs than its share of the nationwide vote would normally allow.

Under MMP, parties keep every electorate seat they win even if those seats exceed their entitlement from the party vote. Parliament then expands beyond its usual 120 seats to accommodate the extra MPs.

TPM is asking supporters to give it their electorate vote while directing the party vote elsewhere. If it retained or increased its Māori electorate seats while receiving a very small party vote, the result could increase the total number of MPs aligned with a potential Labour-led government.

Writing in the NZ Herald, lawyer and National Party member Liam Hehir argues this goes further than previous tactical-voting arrangements involving the Greens in Coromandel or Act in Epsom, because those strategies were not designed to deliberately create overhang seats.

He points to Lesotho, where parties exploited a similar two-vote MMP system in 2007 by dividing constituency and party votes between allied parties. An alliance receiving just over half the vote ended up with almost 70% of parliamentary seats. Lesotho subsequently changed its electoral law.

Hehir argues a similar result in New Zealand could provoke demands for electoral reform and potentially strengthen calls from Act and NZ First to abolish the reserved Māori electorates.

That outcome is speculative. There is no automatic mechanism linking an overhang to the abolition of the Māori seats, and National has not adopted such a policy.

But Hehir argues that if electorate-vote tactics were seen to determine who forms government despite the proportional party vote, public tolerance for the current system could be tested.

Read more at the NZ Herald

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