Mayoral Racing

I got my voting papers in the post yesterday. (My first ever in NZ - I'm a fairly new resident of this great nation. Incidentally, I think that allowing permanent residents to vote is great).

Here in Auckland, we get a pretty substantial little book of candidates. I'm surprised they don't move the District Health Board elections to a different year, cutting down the number of posts up for election at once. And I'm fairly sure that Bruce Hucker will get quite a few disregarded votes as Mayor.

I think the question for me is whether I want rid of Banksie enough to vote for Dick Hubbard. I just have this nasty feeling that he might turn out to be a bit of a wowser, to use an Australianism. He is some sort of Christian, I believe, and as a militant agnostic I do try and vote for the least pious candidate in any election. I'd vote for Steve Berry, but in an FPP election voting for a fringe candidate seems to be a bit of a waste.

On the rest of the ballot, I think I'll just use an exclusion system:

• I won't vote for any CitRats - as neither a citizen or a ratepayer I assume they don't want my vote anyway.
• Some of the candidates have clear signs of being barking mad - for most this is made fairly clear in the bio, so I'll exclude those.
• For the health board, it seems sensible to favour those with a medical background who might know something about the issues.
• Otherwise, all councils (everywhere) seem to have far too many old gits elected, so I'll start with the youngest and work upwards.

I'm working on an intelligent post about public transport and housing densities, BTW.