We are paying $3300 for DS to go into a quarantine facility for 14 days so he can spend Christmas and January with us.

She was directly voted in by her district. She is chosen by her party to be its leader, but the party could change its mind if it wanted to. She is equivalent to Mitch Mcconnell if the US did not have the House or the president. NZ has one chamber of 120 people, she is the leader of the party in power.

I voted for an MP from one party, and gave my party vote to a different party. You don't have to align them. You can be strategic. So I really like my electorate MP, but I wanted the other party represented in parliament

haha. I just went to see the images. No, we don't have fruit next to people's names. But Yes, each party gets to put their colored symbol next to their name. So in America you would have a donkey and an elephant next to the names based on party, or whatever image the party chose to use. The ballot is as colorful and as simple as the images you are seeing. In the past, we voted with a pink magic marker - one tick party vote, one tick electorate MP. They chose PINK because no party uses this color currently. But this year, they didn't want everyone using the same marker because of covid, so we each got our own pen which they then washed before passing it out again. I was very sad that we didn't get the pink marker. That always gave me the giggles.

From my point of view, the best way to describe the effect this system has on our politics compared to America is that coalitions here are built *after* the election rather than being embedded in the parties like in the USA. In America, the parties always talk about being big umbrellas, bringing together large very different groups of people. So the Democrats have the progressives, the environmentalists, the unions, etc. And the Republicans have the rural vote, the christian conservatives, the pro business lobby, etc. This does shift in America over the decades, but it is hidden within the party. When Americans vote for a party, it is a mixture of what they want and don't want. In NZ, all these different groups form their own parties and the coalitions form after the election. We have a green party, and a christian conservative party, and a libertarian party, and they get into Parliament as minority parties. Then they are courted by the larger parties to form a 'government' - a group of MPs who have more than half of the seats. The impact of this is 2 fold as I see it: 1) transparency. We are clear on the coalitions built and the impact of them on the policies made. 2) fluidity of coalitions: The coalitions do not always form in the same way. This means that parties have to work with other parties that they don't usually choose to work with. This requires different types of compromise.

NZ voted by referendum 30 years ago to switch to an MMP system which makes the parliament proportional to the parties voted for. We have TWO votes: one for the person we want to represent our district, and 1 for the party we want to represent us in the parliament. Electorate MPs: This is like a standard US election. Candidates run against each other and whoever gets >50% wins and gets into parliament. 70 MPs out of 120 total are electorate MPs. List MPs: The remaining 50 MPs out of 120 are list MPs. We don't vote for them directly. The parties rank the people they want to get in. Then our second vote, the party vote, determines who gets in. They consider how many electorate MPs have been chosen from each party, and then top up the MPs with those from the lists so that each party is represented proportionally based on the % of the party vote they won. So since Labour won 50% of the vote, they get 50% of the MPs. But then all the smaller parties also get MPs. So the Greens got 8% of the votes so they get 8% of the MPs. This means that smaller parties are represented in Parliament, which obviously does NOT happen in the American system. Two more details: 1) the party must reach 5% to get represented in parliament. So there were like 20 parties that got party votes, but will get no representation. This is why you will see on the news that Labour won 49.1% of the party votes, but will get about 64 out of 120 MPs. They have to divvy up the percentage of party votes that don't go to any party. 2) Sometimes the only way to get the percentage correct is to go above 120 MPs.

Labour has clearly won, but it is touch an go as to whether Labour (Ardern's party) can rule without a coalition. They are right at 50% with overseas votes due in the next 2 weeks. If they can rule without the Greens, it will be the first time since MMP was started 30 years ago, that a single party will hold all the power. Now we wait. In 2 weeks we will know the final results. No news on the referendums as they are counted separately.

I hear that it is complicated, but the US made no effort to change. NZ changed its health system in response to the pandemic, and they changed it FAST. I'm not saying the US could mimic NZ, but to suggest that "this is the way it has always been, so it is the way it will always be" is self defeating. The US made a choice. And the choice was the status quo.

57% of eligible voters voted before election day!

When the pandemic started, NZ was divided into 20 completely separate, independently-acting, District Health Boards. The Ministry of Health was a very weak force. They have spent the last 6 months desperately trying to coordinate these groups. They have succeeded but it did not start out that way.

Ashley Bloomfield has asked for people to please answer their phones. I don't know how often they don't actually go their door, but I do know that the contact tracers go to their church or school leaders and ask them to please help. Communication has been key here. When Princeton did a review of the NZ response they named three things: 1) the ability of Ashley Bloomfield to communicate (this was lucky as he is a health buracrat not a communicator by training), 2) Jacinda Ardern's ability to communicate, 3) a strong social contract so that people do what they have been asked.

We usually don't have the referendums. So it was a large ballot for NZ. 🙂 We vote in the American election too, so I know what a large ballot looks like!!!

Katy and Janeway, I can hear you are both frustrated. But you are going to get this thread locked.

We voted for 1) Our parliament member 2) The Party we wanted (we have an MMP system, so there are "list members", who aren't voted in directly, but get in based on the party vote) 3) Referendum: To legalize and control recreational marijuana 4) Referendum: To legalize the right to die (terminal illness with 6 months to live, plus uncontrollable pain) That was all that was on the ballot.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/123114127/election-2020-why-you-cant-see-any-election-coverage-right-now The NZ election is today! But there is a news blackout from midnight to 7pm today. All election posters and billboards had to be down by midnight. You are not allowed to influence the vote today. More than half of eligible voters have already voted, including me! There were 5 polling stations open in my area that you could walk in during business hours and vote early. We are having an election party tonight!

Here, it is about 6 hours after getting a positive test that the contact tracers will contact you. If they cannot get you on the phone, they will go to your door. If you are a close contact of a positive test, you will be contacted within 48 hours of the contact tracers getting the positive result info. Ashley Bloomfield talks about we have reached the 'gold standard' of 48 hours to contact trace and put all close contacts into self isolation.

Our test results are now a 24 hour turn around. Here, all positive covid test results are sent to the Ministry of Health contact tracers directly. So they have the info same day. Negative tests are sent to the people themselves.

NZ does. Our August outbreak had 185 cases spread throughout a city of 2 million. It was knocked down to zero in SIX weeks. Zero active cases even though it had been found in 3 workplaces, 3 schools, 2 city wide bus trips, 2 churches, a funeral, a wedding, a retirement village, multiple restaurants, and multiple tourist venues in 2 additional cities. This was done through contact tracing, high volume testing, genomic testing, communication with religious leaders (one sub-cluster was in an evangelical church whose members were covid deniers), and a 2 week lockdown of the city. Ashley Bloomfield, our Director General of Health, said last week that his team is getting contacted by countries throughout the world seeking guidance on how to improve contact tracing.

We have just finished winter, and there is a lot in the news here about mental health effects of even our shorter lockdowns. Take care of yourselves.

Oh, I can sing! I just can't keep a tune! I have a very loud, very clear, beautiful voice. I could be an opera singer if I could just hear the notes. 🙂

Me neither. Boardies have been a powerful force in how I have homeschooled. Plus, my older boy would not be at MIT except for this board.

I was just coming to say Miquon, so agreeing with Little Green. But also, YOU as the teacher is going to be critical. The curriculum is not very important, but you are.

Yes, he had proctored exams in a big hall when in person. I'm not sure his entire mindset, but he decided he would delay the classes until they could be in person so he would have to do electronic monitoring. He was going to have to write all his answers on an ipad that they shipped to him, and have the zoom screen open the whole time. This is just not how my ds learns. He was homeschooled his whole school career and I never gave tests, so he is not a big fan of them. And doing them on an ipad with a zoom window was more than he was willing to do.

We are in Ohio. Also a swing state.

It is going to cost me $3300 plus the plane flight to see my ds over christmas. We have to pay for quarantine because he is coming back for a holiday, not to live.