Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "Reuters" channel.

  1. All else aside, what on earth does that have to do with a video about New Zealand?
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  2. I invite you to look into Tom Scott's video on why E-voting (and, for that matter, electronic voting machines) is a terrible idea at the best of times. As for technology and campagning, it runs into the echo-chamber problem: only the people who already support you see your message. In person, giving speeches, participating in debates, attending local meetings and answering questions and such, That gets more neutral people to actually consider you. (I know one such meeting was the only reason I had even heard of a candidate i ended up voting for in that election prior to getting to the polling booth, for example.) Mind you,New Zealand is perfectly Capable of safely holding an election under COVID-19 alert level 2 conditions if it needs to. With a bit of a run-up it's probably quite possible to carry out an election under level 3 as well (entirely by mail in ballot). Campaigning, on the other hand, is a bit awkward under level 2 and highly restricted (just as a side effect of the regular restrictions) under level 3. (For reference, level 4 is full lockdown and level 1 is almost entirely business as usual if you're not trying to cross the border.)
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  3. Yes, delaying them a few weeks to allow time to actually conduct proper campaigns in the lead up to them, which works in favour of her Opponents, because said opponents requested such and went on record saying that not doing so would be unfair is the same as canceling them. good job.
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  4.  @Stephensouraski  same way anyone else does? Just because you run out of land before you hit the edge of a nation's territory in every direction rather than just one or two (or none) doesn't men there aren't borders, it just changes the practicalities of crossing and controlling them. Also, New Zealand isn't a single island anymore than Japan or the Philippines are.
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  5. They're only Required to hold an election after 3 years anyway. Usual practice is to dissolve parliament earlier than necessary relative to the election date, then have the election earlier than necessary compared the the maximum term length date. Both can consequently be pushed back a bit without issue.
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  6. NZ typically has its elections sooner than required, and disolves parliament earlier before the election date than required. Pushing it back is, as a result, less of a problem. For bonus points, while the PM Can call an election before the 3 year term is up, and usually does, if they Don't, the Governor General (or the Queen, if she happened to be around at the time) just dissolves parliament when the term runs out and calls the election Anyway, unless it's mid-kegitimate-state-of-emergency, and even then requires parliament to pass a bill with a limited duration to that effect which the GG must sign off on, and Parliament generally doesn't like doing things like that for the same reason the GG doesn't like not signing bills which pass the bote into law: constitutional crises are bad. And election shenanigans are one of the few things that would see Parliament come off worst from such.
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  7. They delayed Dissolution over 9 cases. They delayed the Election mostly over the opposition complaining about the resulting shortened campaign period. There is a minimum time between dissolution and election, but the usual practice is to allow longer than that for campaigning and such. If Dissolution had been delayed long enough it would have Eventually forced the election to have been delayed too, but that's not what happened.
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  8. Nope, 4 cases and they took an action that may have required the election to be delayed if the current state of affairs lasted too long. Over 100 cases and the situation under control and improving, and they delayed the election about a month to ensure there was time for proper election campaigns to be carried out. A course of action mostly advocated by the Opposition, I might add, with the PM being entirely within their rights to call a snap election (that is, election day being the absolute minimum legally permissable time after the day parliament desolves.)
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