Who I'm voting for: Wellington City Council

I liked last year's local body elections better. A friend of mine was running for mayor and someone pied Kerry Prendergast. Although I'm stillenjoying STV, because I like complicated voting systems. But even STV doesn't make godawful candidates any more worth voting for.

The two most important issues for me are public transport and council housing. I want public transport to be frequent and free.* I want council housing to be upgraded, accessible (I don't think they could have made council housing less accessible if lack of access had been a design specification), income-related rents, and plentiful. Unfortunately most of the candidates don't appear to care about any issues, let alone the ones that are important to me. Luckily I don't have faith in the electoral system - or this might be depressing.

Mayor

I'm not voting for Mayor this time round. As a friend of mine said - there are a couple of people there I could rank 10th or 11th, but putting anyone higher up the list is very problematic. It's all irrelevant because Kerry Prendergast is going to win anyway, and the only reason to vote would be to boost the ego of one of the candidates, which really isn't a priority for me. If I was going to rank the candidates it might look something like this:

15. Nick Kelly
25. Bryan Pepperall
35. Helene Ritchie
45. Ray Ahipene-Mercer
60. Nick Wang
80. Carl Gifford
100. Jack Ruben
120. Paul Bailey
3,000. Rob Goulden
300,000. John McGrath
300,001. Kerry Prendergast


Lambton Ward

People I will rank:

1. Stephanie Cook - easily the least awful of the current councillors in any ward. Although looking at her blurb I probably wouldn't have voted for her if I didn't know who she was. She seems to have fallen foul of the general local body blurb writing problem - a complete lack of content or policies in favour of stupid buzz words.

2. Callum Strong - His blurb is better than almost everyone else's in that he mentioned policies, and one of them was public transport, which I agree with. But I'm mainly voting for him because a friend of mine took his photo.

People I'm not ranking and why:

Iona Pannet - The main problem is that she hates poor people. The second problem is that I hate the Greens, mostly because they hate poor people (although the fact that Russel Norman believes Clint Rickards over Louise Nicholas certainly doesn't help).

Ian McKinnon: In a race full of business candidates he is the businessiest.

Alick Shaw - When the fundies had their pro-smacking march I went to the counter demonstration, so did Alick Shaw. I almost left. I can't believe he's running on a Labour city-vision ticket - I would have thought they had more principles than to associate with him. Given the level principles that I think the Labour party has, that's an insult indeed.

Michael Durrant - He thinks his qualifications include his background in: marketing, advertising, real estate and recruitment - if only he'd been a cop as well I'd have had five reasons not to vote for him.

Frank Lawton - The only thing he stands for is spending the council's money better. Would anyone run on spending the council's money worse? Spending money better is almost certainly code for subsidising businesses and hating poor people.

Ed Van Son - Even if I didn't know he was a sleazy asshole - the hippy shit in his blurb would rule him out straight away, One World indeed.

Still to come - Wellington Regional Council and Health Board.

* Although it has occurred to me that free public transport would mean two of my friends would lose their jobs - sorry.