The Maori Electoral Option Campaign: Problems of Measuring ‘Success’

Abstract

The latest Maori Electoral Option (MEO) resulted in a seventh Maori seat in Parliament contested in the recent election. Over a four-month period in 2001, 18,738 Maori exercised their Option to shift electoral rolls-threequarters of them moving from the General roll to the Maori roll. This paper looks at the latest Option and its effectiveness as a communication campaign. The MEO is controversial because many New Zealanders are divided about the democratic fairness of separate Maori seats. The spectre of a dozen Maori electorates, if all Maori join the Maori roll, is unnerving to opponents who concentrate their fire upon the cost and conduct of the campaign. The MEO challenges traditional assumptions about objective political communication. The Option pioneered a systemized method of kanohi ki te kanohi (face-to-face) communication. Developed by Maori for Maori, the model has been used in other government communication campaigns but remains controversial because of the lack of centralised control over the delivered message and the difficulty of measuring the campaign's success. This paper explores the issues surrounding its methods and effectiveness.

Contiguity, constituencies, and the political representation of minorities

“…Various other techniques can increase minority representation, even to the point of proportionality (Handley, 2008: 275–278). These include separate voter rolls and seats, as with the Maori Electoral Option in New Zealand (Comrie et al., 2002); increasing the number of constituencies (Leib and Webster, 1998); consociationalism that institutionalizes proportional group participation in government (Lijphart, 1984); centripetalism that creates institutional incentives for compromise across social cleavages (Horowitz, 1985; Reilly, 2001); cumulative voting systems where two or more seats are assigned to the same constituency and electors may cast the same number of votes as the number of seats (Guinier, 1994); and proportional representation systems, with or without minority quotas (Bird, 2014; Lublin and Wright, 2013).…”

Untitled

“…Underfunding could have consequences for Mäori political power. Indeed, as noted above the number of Mäori seats is based on how many Mäori choose the Mäori roll (Comrie, Gillies, & Day, 2002).…”

Communication in Aotearoa New Zealand: The Challenge of Engaging Globally and Acting Locally

“…Henderson, 2005;McKie and Munshi, 2007;Motion and Leitch, 1996;Munshi and Kurian, 2005;Weaver and Motion, 2002), there has been minimal application of these critical perspectives to the question of how practitioners intersect with Māori in the development of public relations initiatives in Aotearoa New Zealand. What limited research is available suggests that practitioners are very aware of the need to construct culturally sensitive communications (Comrie et al, 2002;Comrie and Kupa, 1998-99;Tipene-Leach et al, 2000). However, there is little evidence that a full kaupapa Māori approach has been used in the development of communication campaigns.…”