Electoral Candidates

Infrastructure has not and should not change regardless of situations. Last election after the candidates were chosen we had a full day head drilling with press reps, social media reps, and policy writers. It was a very hard working one day event. After that for the following two months this drilling continued with the candidates when back at their electorates via email. I would say regardless of all other things that there are enough of us oldies (ex 2014 elections) still within to do exactly the same as we did then.

On other information re deciding upon standing for IP in your electorate; Simple things to consider...
Do you believe in yourself and IP enough to make others believe?
Do you want to be part of a party that wants to improve NZ?
Have you had enough of NZ's political road to nowhere approach to participate in changing that road to a road to success?
If you answered yes to at least two of these then the rest is easy, put your name in for a candidate slot.
The more the merrier is my opinion.

I'm also around the Botany/Pakuranga Area so I would be keen to run, perhaps for Pakuranga if Martyn wants to contest the Botany Electorate or even Auckland Central. Mt Albert is too far for me and I don't know enough about that electorate, its still on the table up to mid January.

@grantkeinzley glad to hear that we will have that experience from the previous election to draw upon! :smiley: How will people be chosen as candidates for the various Electorates? For instance I have put myself forward as a possible Electoral candidate for Botany, and of course I expect other people putting themselves forward for the Botany candidacy as well.

Will there be some kind of criteria that we will be judged upon? Who will be doing the judging? Will we have a similar day where we meet with reps to go over the basics? As this is the Party' s second election and the first where the Party is standing as it's own entity what expectations do we have with regards to the numbers of votes we are expecting?

Looking at the 2014 election Internet Mana got 34,095 votes and in the 2011 election Mana got 24,168 votes so I'm estimating that the Internet Party had about 10,000 votes in the last election, of course that is just a rough estimate and doesn't take into account any variables like Mana gaining or losing votes on their own etc.

Might be like American Idol :sweat_smile:

On this year's process for choosing the candidates no decision
has yet been made. Its all in the hands of the execs at the moment
and we are working on it :)

Here's a list of the Electorates with the potential Candidates beside the Electorate.

• Auckland Central -
• Bay of Plenty -
• Botany - Martyn Anderson
• Christchurch Central -
• Christchurch East -
• Clutha-Southland -
• Coromandel -
• Dunedin North -
• Dunedin South
• East Coast
• East Coast Bays
• Epsom
• Hamilton East
• Hamilton West
• Helensville
• Hunua
• Hutt South
• Ilam
• Invercargill
• Kaikōura
• Kelston
• Mana
• Mangere
• Manukau East
• Manurewa
• Maungakiekie
• Mt Albert
• Mt Roskill
• Napier
• Nelson
• New Lynn
• New Plymouth
• North Shore
• Northcote
• Northland
• Ōhariu
• Ōtaki
• Pakuranga - Daymond Goulder-Horobin
• Palmerston North -
• Papakura -
• Port Hills -
• Rangitata -
• Rangitīkei -
• Rimutaka -
• Rodney -
• Rongotai -
• Rotorua -
• Selwyn -
• Tāmaki -
• Taranaki-King Country -
• Taupō -
• Tauranga -
• Te Atatu -
• Tukituki -
• Upper Harbour -
• Waikato -
• Waimakariri -
• Wairarapa -
• Waitaki -
• Wellington Central -
• West Coast-Tasman -
• Whanganui -
• Whangarei -
• Wigram -

Maori Electorates
* Hauraki-Waikato -
* Ikaroa-Rawhiti -
* Tamaki Makaurau -
* Te Tai Hauauru -
* Te Tai Tokerau -
* Te Tai Tonga -
* Waiariki -

Do we have a web page that potential candidates can post a profile on that we can link to?

Did a bit of Reading from the electoral handbook. The party can either have the candidates individually enroll or submit as a bulk nomination but not both, might be easier to sort out the final candidates and submit all together.

I've Listed the handbook below for further reading

http://www.elections.org.nz/sites/default/files/bulk-upload/documents/candidate_handbook_2014.pdf

Realistically, we should focus on the party vote - but certainly having a list of local candidates should we win the day makes sense.
In the last election a number of local electorates had neither Mana or IP candidates - so even 'protest' votes had to go to the lesser of the evils. Lots of people asked who to vote for last time - and generally there wasn't an answer in most electorates. We need local people around the country prepared to take the message to their communities - as well has several key winnable (?) electorates.

@daymondgoulderhorobin is there a discount if we do the group thing? :) Seriously though we need more people to step up as candidates for their electorate. That does put us in the interesting position of having to pay for them, I'm more than willing to pay the enrollment fee myself if I'm chosen but I'm just going to sulk if I don't get it. ;)

@jobooth I agree completely that we should be focusing on the Party vote, in fact I believe that we are more than capable of reaching the 5% necessary with a well thought out and focused campaign strategy, however going from the stats from the last election I estimate we had about 10,000+ Party votes. I get that number by taking the party vote for Internet Mana in the 2014 election and subtracting the party vote for Mana in the 2011 previous election. Of course that doesn't take into account any variables it's just a straight deduction.

However I don't think that accurately reflects our support amongst New Zealanders, what it does reflect is that we have to be able to mobilise our support base and get them out and voting. One of the things that was interesting to me was at the meeting when I was talking with Daymond and Colin is that neither of them knew any other members personally. It was the first time any of us had met a fellow Internet Party supporter in person.

I think without a doubt there is a huge space for the party to grow into, over 22% of eligible voters don't vote, but if we aren't reaching out and putting ourselves out there it isn't going to happen. I think the Informal Meetups are an excellent starting point but we also need to make an effort on a personal level to attract people to the party as well. I would suggest that within everybody's social circle there is at least 2 people that would be interested in the Internet Party so maybe we should set a goal of each of us trying to recruit at least 2 people from our social circles into the Party. Probably this should be in another thread.