We voted!

NZ had its local elections last month, and its one of the neat things here that as non-citizen residents we get to vote. Although this election was not online, they still make it pretty easy… drop your ballot in the box or the mail, any time during the three weeks leading up to Election Day. Besides the many mailboxes around, ballot boxes were at every library, post office, and supermarket.

A year ahead of national elections in which St. Jacinda of Arden might face real competition, everyone and their dog is trying to parse the results. There does seem to have been a rightward shift. Certainly the Auckland mayor’s race … the biggest prize… resulted in the resounding victory of a grumpy white boomer over a Pasifika candidate, a real slap to Jacinda’s Labour Party. But so far, the more scary kind of assault on democratic norms seems limited to a fringe-y bunch of alt-media zombies. And we are happy to be two five-millionths of the electorate charged with keeping it that way.