Don't touch that button Sherman

[threemonkeys]

Waaaaay way back when I was in the 5th form, we studied the history of universal suffrage in Britain*. It was a long and complex process involving many twist and turns with big political battles along the way. One of the key steps was the abolition of multiple voting. Back in the 19th century there was a time where if you owned property in multiple electorates (borough, county whatever) then you could vote in each of those electorates. Abolishing that was just one step in the process that led to full universal suffrage in 1928.

Today, with the rates bill, I received a flyer from "New Zealand Local Authority Electoral Officers". It contains this headline: "Do you live in one area and pay rates on a property in another?" "Then you may qualify to vote in more than one local authority election this October."

Well OK, I understand the reason and why it may be appropriate, but doesn't it just typify where our local body politics still reside - somewhere in the mid 19th century.

*Why Britain and not our own country. Well we did cover that too - it took the teacher about 10 minutes.

Comments

[littenz.livejournal.com]

Sort of yes, and a big no.

The multiple local body voting thing is based on the theory that as each local body has the delegated power to tax (rates) and regulate then those who have a permanent interest in the locality should have a say in the composition of that governing body. There was a move to eliminate multiple local body voting until the size of the multi-landholding bloc was realised.

There was also significant disquiet with the performance (some very debt ridden) and aspirations (grandiose was one of the more polite terms) of local bodies - and the whole one person one vote concept anywhere for local bodies suddenly got dropped.

I vaguely recall that until the 1960s voting in local body elections was restricted to ratepayers.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

You missed the bit where I said "OK, I understand the reason" - I was taking a much broader unfocused swipe at the shoddy state of local body politics which this happened to trigger.

Voting was probably opened up in the 70s - the 72-75 Labour government did some reforms in this area.

[tofulope.livejournal.com]

Hi, looking at friendsfriends page again.

Just like to add that Britain didn't actually become truly one person one vote until after WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_of_the_People_Act_1948

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I didn't know that. They didn't cover that at school :-)

In my defense, I had checked my facts using this article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_suffrage).