Mike's Minute: The problem with local body elections

I don’t know Elisha Milmine and I wish her nothing but the best.

But as it turns out, she is your new councillor in the Kahuranaki ward for the Hastings District Council.

She was standing against one person, that person withdrew, so she wins by default.

She has no experience. She put her hand up, was the only one standing so, congratulations, the job's yours.

What a stupid system.

This story is far from unique. Plenty of elections aren't even held because no one stands, or people who may or may not be any good don’t get opponents so they win by default.

So, here is an idea.

Accepting we are fantastically over-governed and clearly there are nowhere near the number of people interested in filling the jobs, how about we run a system whereby you have a minimum number of candidates, like a quorum?

If you don’t get that number then the vote is off. The people, if there are any, don’t contest and either the seat is vacant for a term and/or a commissioner or overseer is appointed, like they have done in Tauranga and other places when the council falls apart.

In other words, you bring in an experienced expert.

Having a vacant space might lead to more interest next time, or the realisation that there are too many seats.

Having an expert or commissioner might lead to a realisation that amateur hour is no way to run a city, town or district.

We don’t hand out regular jobs by default. Why on Earth do we do it at the highest level of civic leadership?

The scenario is so desperate we literally take anyone. That’s not smart when you're running a raffle, far less a population.

And yet here we are with any number of councils mired in debt and handing out cost-plus-accounting rate rises because they don't have a clue how to run anything properly.

If someone from Mars came down to review the way we do this they would fall over laughing at our stupidity.

So, it’s a contest, it’s a quorum, or we do some appointing of some actual talent.

Tell me it isn't a bad idea.

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