Rodney Hide’s yellow jacket

The yellow jacket was a brilliant piece of advertising. Homepaddock has an excellent article showing the double standard in this country: a bathing suit with a Green logo is fine, a jacket with an ACT logo isn’t. Yes the Electoral Finance Act plus a corrupt Labour-appointed Electoral Commission equals Hide being referred to the police for wearing a jacket with a party logo.

If you believe that this country still has justice and truth, read the Homepaddock article, read the Electoral Commission decision she links to, and weep.

Hat tip: Kiwiblog

Update #1 Homepaddock is reporting that the Green swimsuit was fine because it had no slogan with the party logo, but Hide’s jacket wasn’t fine because it had a slogan with the party logo. I still say that this law came out of the southern end of a cow that was facing north. The cow’s name was…

The interesting thing is that one of Hide’s supporters made the complaint about the jacket, so this is clearly a publicity stunt intended to defame the EFA and increase the fame of Hide. Good on them.

This is an excellent illustration of what I said in my earlier post: the EFA does not breach “human rights” (there is no such thing), but it does breach property rights. In this case it prevents Rodney doing what he likes with the jacket that he owns.

Update #2 Madeleine has made a complaint about a labour candidate’s election shirt and it’s been kicked up to the Chief Electoral Office.

• Insane rules for election day

The comments button is at the bottom right of this post.

According to this page on the Elections website the government kindly allows free debate on any day except election day:

You are free to start or join debate, and to try to influence other voters

As an individual you can join in any time (except on election day) by communicating with people you know, or to the public through talkback radio, writing newspaper letters or articles, putting your personal opinions online on a non-commercial basis, getting news coverage of your views, or communicating directly to members of your organisation or shareholders in your company.

I have three responses to the rules for election day:

1) First let’s look at “communicating with people you know”. I’ve been looking at s197 of the Electoral Act and I cannot see anything preventing me from talking to my friends about the election on polling day, so I don’t know where the Electoral Commission got this from. Section 197 (1)(h) says that you can’t give anyone a written list of parties and candidates on election day, but apart from that the gist of s197 covers broadcasting, public places, etc.

2) I can understand the rules in s197 that prevent squads of party faithful waylaying and intimidating voters in the street, but the rules requiring billboards to be taken down are simply insulting the intelligence of voters. Also, the rules allow cars and people to have rosettes, streamers etc. on election day, so banning billboards is inconsistent.

3) s197 also prevents people from trying to influence voters on election day via the internet, TV, radio, public address systems/loudspeakers and the like. I can understand that extremely loud public address systems could be intimidatory to voters, but internet, radio and TV are all opt-in means of communication, i.e. you have to turn them on, you are not forced to listen to them, and you can turn them off at at any time. Therefore I believe that on election day I should be able to say whatever I like on my blog, or on a radio station I own, or on a radio station whose time I have purchased. As I said in my earlier post, I should be allowed to say whatever I like when I am using my own property.

However, my slave masters will not allow this so in this post I have avoided (take a deep breath now) “any statement advising or intended or likely to influence any elector as to the candidate or party for whom the elector should or should not vote”.

Related post:

There is no such thing as “human rights”: a classical liberal perspective on the Electoral Finance Act

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Response from the Electoral Commission

In an earlier post I stated that I suspect that the Service and Food Workers Union used a “survey” as an election advertisement, but called it a survey so that it wouldn’t count towards their $120,000 spending limit. I raised my concerns with the electoral commission and here is their response in full:

I have now had an opportunity to consider the concerns you raise below.

An election advertisement is defined in section 5 of the Electoral Finance Act as:
(1) In this Act, election advertisement—

(a) means any form of words or graphics, or both, that can reasonably be regarded as doing 1 or more of the following:

(i) encouraging or persuading voters to vote, or not to vote, for 1 or more specified parties or for 1 or more candidates or for any combination of such parties and candidates:

(ii) encouraging or persuading voters to vote, or not to vote, for a type of party or for a type of candidate that is described or indicated by reference to views, positions, or policies that are or are not held, taken, or pursued (whether or not the name of a party or the name of a candidate is stated); and

(b) includes—

(i) a candidate advertisement; and

(ii) a party advertisement.

On viewing the webpages indicated, from the information you supplied there it appears that the survey does not contain any exhortations to vote or other information that might be reasonably regarded as encouraging or persuading voters to vote or not to vote in a particular manner.

In respect of the items published in the union periodical, there are a number of other exclusions in the Act which would cover these including being excluded from the definition of an election advertisement by section 5(2):

(f) a document published directly by—

(i) an incorporated body to its shareholders or members:

(ii) an unincorporated body to its members:

As a result, the items do not appear to come within the definition of election advertisements.    The publication of items which are not considered to be an election advertisement is not regulated by the Electoral Finance Act.

Regards
Deidre Brookes

Statutory Relationships Manager
Electoral Commission
DDI:  04 474 0673
Mobile:  021 0260 8928
Email:  deidre@elections.govt.nz
Web:  http://www.elections.org.nz
P O Box 3050
Wellington 6140

[emphasis added - I did not query the use of periodicals. The address is there so that you can make a complaint]

What a load of bunkum: the survey was clearly “encouraging or persuading voters”: remember that they are calling union members who are mainly at or not far above the minimum wage. Why would the Union be calling undecided voters if they were not intending to persuade voters? Do companies conducting genuine pre-election polls call undecided voters a second time?

Do you want the good news or the bad news first?

The bad news

We have a corrupt government and their servants at the Electoral Commission are protecting the friends of the Labour government in the unions  with a ruling such as this. The “survey” should be included in the SFWU tally of election expenses.

Also, note that union periodicals are not election advertisements under the Electoral Finance Act, when they clearly are election advertisements: the SFWU has exploited this by sending out a Spring issue, then a Summer issue in spring and two weeks before the election. Both were heavy with election advertisements.

The good news

We can use periodicals sent to members of organisations as blatant election advertisements.

This also gives those on the side of freedom, justice and truth (i.e. those opposed to the Labour/Green cabal) greater scope: the definition of what is not an election advertisement is broader than we thought. However, do not expect the same interpretations to apply if you are opposed to the White Witch.

Lynch the White Witch on November 8!

Update: I invited Deidre Brookes to respond to this post; she replied to my email but declined the invitation.