If the Government wants to increase local election voter turnout they should mandate STV for all councils

What is completely wrong is that a council can choose their own electoral system. We don’t believe people would find STV too difficult to understand. Dunedin City Council, as it turns out, has all of its councillors elected at large (no wards) and uses STV to elect them and the mayor. This should be a requirement for all councils around NZ. It is a much fairer system (proportional voting) and gets rid of the ability of councillors to build empires in wards. In Christchurch we have 16 wards which is way too many. Abolishing all the wards is the way to go, making councillors show that they have worked across the city instead in just one area. We would be interested to see how the community boards work in Dunedin.