Double dippers
Mother Earth.
Not only that, but only vote for those people you respect. RUTH TIDEMANN Castlecliff Fionna Donne (August 22) was right to warn against rewarding the double dippers — election candidates who seek to double their incomes by getting elected to both the Whanganui District Council and our district health board. That way they also get twice the bang for their signage buck and, for many, the name recognition of being a sitting councillor.
Worse, they keep other worthy candidates, particularly health advocates and consumers, from influencing what goes on at the DHB and its many subsidiary arms working in the community.
This year will bring significant change in the way our council voting papers are laid out after WDC joined a majority of NZ councils in switching from alphabetical order to true random order of candidates’ names.
This is likely to deal a deserved blow to those councillors who have cruised through multiple elections on the basis of alphabetical advantage. They’re beneficiaries of what’s known in the trade as the donkey vote, where residents who know little and care less about the calibre of candidates just start at the top and tick their way down till they reach their quota.
Not surprisingly, a majority of our current councillors have surnames starting with A, B, C & D. So it’s even more disturbing watching them line up for taxpayer-funded DHB salaries as well as their hoped-for ratepayersourced council cash.
But all is not lost for them this year, with the DHB providing a handy alphabetical backstop. It’s notable that with seven DHB members to be elected, the first seven places on the alphabetically ordered ballot paper are names starting with A, B and C. Only the bottom three — an S, a T and a V — are in the second half of the alphabet. So voters need to think carefully about whether they want a DHB chosen by surname thanks to the donkey vote, and instead look down the list for the kind of experience and talent we need at a critical time for our health service. Unfortunately we have no say in the board chair because Dot McKinnon, like so many DHB chairs round NZ, was chosen by the previous National Government for reasons that had nothing to do with the alphabet. CAROL WEBB Whanganui