Poll Update #1

The Do-It-Yourself Referendum

The Diva and diVision came to the election offering "direct democracy", yet all we've seen so far is a one way street. They choose the issues you get to vote on. Which is all very well, but there's no doubt other questions that some people feel ought to be put to the people of Wanganui.

The disappeared diVision democracy policy said citizens could initiate their own referendum by signing up 10 percent of the voting population. That's a lot of winter days spent sitting at a rickety card table in various public spaces trying to explain some complex concept in 25 words or less to busy shoppers. That's why only one citizens-initiated-referendum has got off the ground in NZ - because it had a simple question about paying fire fighters more, and who could argue with that?

Because referenda cost a lot of money to run, there has to be some barrier for the proponents to get over. After all, it would be chaos if half a dozen disgruntled ratepayers could force an expensive city-wide referendum every fortnight.

But since there's going to be a referendum anyway, run in conjunction with the by-election, we feel it wouldn't hurt to include a few additional questions. Questions that the people actually want answers to. It certainly won't cost any more.

So, we're running a two-stage poll. The first stage, running now, allows you to write in up to six questions you'd like to see answered by way of referendum. We'll then collate these, try and find some commonality amongst the responses, and then conduct stage two - a run-off vote to determine the most popular suggestions. These will then be submitted to Council for consideration.

You can write in your questions by going here and following the instructions. This poll runs for 30 days. It started yesterday so, surprisingly, you have 29 days left.

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