It's Your Right to Decide?

The Hutt City Council, by not making any decision on whether Lower Hutt City should decide whether it adopts Single Transferable Voting (STV) or retain First Past the Post (FPP) has, according to The Electoral Reform Coalition,denied Lower Hutt City residents a say in the choice of what electoral system the city should adopt in a referendum. The Hutt branch of the Electoral Reform Coalition (ERC) believes that:

• city residents and not politicians should be making decisions on what system should be used to elect their politicians.
• there has been no formal council consultation process to substantiate a no decision response by the Hutt City Council for deferring the STV question.
• the democratic rights of Lower Hutt City residents to make a decision now rather then latter on this issue is done on the basis of an assumption that city residents do not care about this issue and is based on the mentality of if "ain't broke so don't fix it".
• a public education campaign on the basis of that being run in Wellington City has already stimulated interest in this issue and voting returns show it is currently attracting good participation rates indicating a similar approach to deciding this issue should be tried in Lower Hutt City.

The purpose of the petition is to give the residents of Lower Hutt City a right to participate in the decision making process of how they elect their council representatives no matter which option they support.

If you are interested in signing this petition or know of other people who may also be interested in signing, please click here to download and print the petition (Acrobat Reader necessary). The petition has to be returned to The Electoral Reform Coalition by 10 December 2002.

Download an STV Fact sheet here (Acrobat Reader necessary).