Woolly thinking about tangled electoral reforms

Otago Daily Times

a day ago

Nestled in the bottom of the box there was a cheery note.
It was from one of the Murchison-dwelling sisters, the Queen of Cookery, famous for her show-stopping baking, and dispensing advice which doesn't beat about the eggs.
It ended with: "I have a feeling it might cause some angst. Hey ho, give it a go."
The angst inducer was a wool winder, a thoughtful gift from the QC and the Auckland-dwelling sister to overcome what they called "future wool dramas".
I can't remember now, but they must have observed me tied up in knots trying to unravel a skein of wool.
It's a situation which always makes me fantasise about being Maniac Magee, the hero of Jerry Spinelli's book of the same name. No knot would ever stay unknotted once he began to untie it. If only.
My patience always falters halfway through the process, scissors are employed, and wool is wasted.
I have tried to erase the memory of what happened last time I used the wool winder, but I am confident there was angst, swearing and wool wastage.
The gift of about a kilogram of orange wool from a friend given it after the closure of the Roslyn Woollen Mill made me think it was time to brave it again.
She couldn't see herself using it and kindly remembered me mentioning a grandson who was keen on an orange jersey.
Since I was dealing with the orange unknown, it was fitting the instructions for the wool winder appeared to have been written by someone impersonating Donald Trump.
It was all in capitals — never a good sign — with random words beginning with bold lettering.
(There was also mention of a swift, something I thought was a made-up word in this context a la Donald until Mr Google informed me it's an umbrella-like contraption to hold the skein while you wind. Necessity might be the mother of invention, but this mother was not capable of massacring an old brolly for the cause.)
The accompanying illustrations to The Donald capitals were a confused blurry mess bearing little resemblance to the winder before me.
Much like The Donald, I blundered on without really knowing what I was doing.
The wool kept going rogue and clogging up the works under the spindle where it was supposed to be gathering.
At one point the spindle, fed up with my incompetence, tried to escape, launching forth from its mooring like one of Elon Musk's failed rockets.
A week on, half the wool is wound in a series of odd balls, the rest slumped accusingly on the back of a chair.
Spookily, orange became the theme of the week, or maybe the theme of the weak.
That other Orange Guy, the mascot of the Electoral Commission, was on my mind.
He and his dog (called Pup even though he has been around long enough to be fully grown by now) will be busier than ever before the next general election, if planned law changes are passed.
It would be wonderful if, during the select committee process, some sense could prevail, binning the proposal to shift the cut-off date for enrolment to 13 days before the election.
We are expected to believe our democracy depends on a faster vote count, rather than having as many people vote as possible.
There has been no proper consideration of ways to speed it up.
Maybe not cynically trying to change laws to hopefully benefit your own vote tally but properly training and employing more vote counters might be the way to do it.
Given the high level of unemployment, it is not as if there is likely to be a shortage of willing workers the electoral commission could nab before they head across the Ditch.
If that costs a bit more, it's worth it if it means more people get to vote.
The government has overplayed the impact of the numbers enrolling and voting on the day of the election, something which has only been available in the last two elections.
It is not so keen to emphasise that before that, since the 1990s, people had been able to enrol up until the day before the election. The sky did not fall.
Those in prison should also be able to vote, regardless of their sentence length. Prison is the punishment, not disenfranchisement.
How could it be fair to have two people serving a similar-length sentence for a similar crime, one in prison, and one at home with an electronic bracelet, being treated two different ways under our electoral law?
It's enough to drive me to the knitting needles.
I'll be chanting "orange is the new black" like a mantra, hoping it will make my grandson cool in his new jersey and offer protection from despotic tendencies.
• Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.