The bastardisation of ‘one person one vote’ that the Right have used to unleash a tsunami of racist anger towards co-governance is not only disgraceful, it’s also a total misrepresentation of democracy!

‘One person one vote’ isn’t the only value in Democracy, there are plenty of different values created within various democratic structures in countries we would absolutely recognise as a Democracy!

‘One person one vote’ has been twisted into the battlecry for the tyranny of the majority without even understanding the democratic structures they claim to be defending!

It’s like book burners demanding to know why their children can’t read.

There are numerous examples around the world of Democratic structures within a Democracy that aren’t just ‘one person one vote’. The Electoral College isn’t set up like that, neither is the Senate, nor the House of Lords and in NZ it is one person two votes, so the entire ‘one person one vote’ sanctimony is made even more outrageous by the speed with which the right flip flop ‘One person one vote’ the moment it comes to people with multiple properties voting in multiple local council elections…

MPs’ views on multiple property-owners getting extra local votes

New Zealand has a rule where some ratepayers who own property and pay rates in different local body areas can have additional votes at the local body elections.

…oh don’t National and ACT change their tune the millisecond their privileges are highlighted?

The moment it’s about them and their rich mates who own multiple properties around the country and who get to vote in multiple elections, suddenly ‘One person one vote’ gets thrown under an unsubsidised Bus route that’s running late, yet when it’s co-governance with Māori, they morph into the saviour defenders of the true Western Democratic Faith?

It’s like Brian Tamaki championing freedom of autonomy (except when it comes to drugs, abortion and anal sex). It’s not really freedom of autonomy if you have to get permission from the Bish first.

The naked hypocrisy of the right to twist ‘One person One Vote’ into a negative egalitarian garrotte around the throat of Democracy while screaming ‘we-are-saving-democracy’ is performative art for Fascists.

ACT are on 11% despite promising to implement hard right conflict policy that could implode into a race war by Māori refusing point blank to allow hard won rights to simply be stripped from them because Chris Luxon is too stupid to stop David Seymour.

The counter backlash to this vast polarisation is a huge jump in non-voting Māori stepping back into the universal suffrage because of the shrillness of the Right’s anti-Māori tactics.

TDB has been arguing for some time that 2023 will be one of our most polarised, it will be won and lost on who Kiwis are most frightened by, an ACT/National Government or a Labour/Green/Māori Party Government.

As more non-voting Māori step back into voting, their numbers will grow, making a Labour/Green/Māori Party Government more likely, which will terrify the Right and cause them to become even more extreme in their racism.

Each side will enflame the other.

In ever increasing and alarmingly violent rhetoric.

Because MMP has always brought in moderating forces like NZ First, the pent up political expression of the Right and the Left has been building for almost a quarter of a century and will finally be expressed next year and with the amplification of anger will result in an election that will see resentment whichever side wins.

When you dog whistle up the worst angels of our nature by manufacturing existential threats to democracy, you generate a confrontation that you are ultimately responsible for.

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