The Liberty Pledge
by Duncan Bayne
[Note: This article is intended to apply to the Libertarianz Party of New Zealand, and to the New Zealand General Elections, but is broadly applicable to any democratic process.]
People everywhere, especially those involved with minority parties, are familiar with this 'chicken and egg' problem: a voter may be reluctant to vote for a minority party, fearing his vote would be wasted should the party fail to meet the cutoff [1].
The solution, which has already been implemented in the U.S.A. by the Free State Project, is to provide voters with a pledge that allows them to accurately determine the support for their preferred party - something like:
We the undersigned pledge to give our Party votes to the Libertarianz Party in the New Zealand General Election of 2005 if, by the cutoff date of February 1st 2005, this pledge has attracted 133502 [2] signatories.
That, in a nutshell, is the Liberty Pledge. It'd be made available somewhere, where people could come and sign it under supervision from a Libertarianz party member - or people could pledge in writing, or possibly by email (if a suitable system could be devised). There'd be sundry legal small-print, including details of how the signatories are counted, who does the counting, privacy policies etc., but those are all details for non-ENTJ types to figure out :-)
Signatories would be required to provide identification and their details would be recorded along with the pledge, in an effort to prevent fraudulent signatures being counted. Of course, this would involve individuals voluntarily surrendering the anonymity of their Party vote to the people running the pledge - but that's the price of having a more accurate pledge system. It's doubtful that such a pledge would be legally enforcable, but that's not the idea - the idea is to provide feedback to voters about levels of party support, and to make that feedback as accurate as possible by using a solemn pledge.
Finally, the Liberty Pledge would be an excellent publicity tool, and would be guaranteed to attract attention from all quarters. In fact, I'd be surprised if other minority parties didn't copy the idea.
1. In New Zealand, under Mixed-Member Proportional voting, a party must accumulate 5% of the total Party votes in order to get an MP in Parliament on the basis of the Party vote. Thus, if a party polls at 4.5% of the Party vote, and fails to win an electorate, that 4.5% is discarded. See the NZ Elections FAQ for more details.
2. This is 5% of the total number of registered voters in 2002, according to http://www.elections.org.nz/votin/mresources-stats.html.
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