Vote with Both Eyes Open

How much did we spend on the election campaign?

Categories: Campaigning
Posted on November 7, 2008

You may have heard angry people complaining about restrictions on freedom of speech in this year’s election campaign. A series of National and ACT party-aligned spokespeople have questioned New Zealand’s election finance law for restricting any individual or group’s election advertising to only $120,000, claiming this is a shocking restriction of political rights. This was always nonsense.

One of our goals in the Vote with Both Eyes Open campaign was to show that democratic action doesn’t need to cost huge sums of money. Our campaign has involved numerous people around the country putting up many thousands of posters and stickers and dozens of banners. But the posters were simply photocopied and the banners painted by supporters. Our costs have been paper, glue and copying for the posters and fabric and paint for the banners. We are pleased with our impact.

All this cost us only slightly over $3000, less than 3% of the maximum permitted sum. This is a good reminder that the only ‘freedom’ being promoted by critics of election spending limits is the freedom of wealthy groups and individuals to try to outspend their political opponents. This isn’t democracy and, as our campaign shows, is unnecessary when you have people who care enough to take part.

For the sake of openness, the following list contains generous estimates of the costs of the Vote with Both Eyes Open website, posters, stickers and banners during the election campaign.

Website $211.30

Posters & Leaflets $1,570.48

Estimate of unreported printing $78.52

Banners $896.00

Stickers $278.34

Postage $301.30

Total $3,335.94

Notes:

All the items here were donated by individuals (from people who printed material, to banner poles from members’ gardens), so in many cases the actual costs are unknown and estimates have been made based on commercial costs.
The posters and leaflets cost is based on the number of A3 and A4 pages printed, and an estimate for costs of paste, tape and so on.
As we provided access to all our posters on our website there may have been some posters and leaflets unreported. We made a significant effort to track all our printing costs, but we have provide a 5% estimate to account for any printing which was not reported.

Tags: Electoral Finance Act / Transparency

Stephen Franks’ campaign team caught out destroying opponents’ posters

Categories: In the wild
Posted on November 5, 2008

Another Nat taking down posters, Tuesday night Willis St

Stephen Franks team taking down posters on Wednesday morning

The same people campaigning with Stephen Franks Wednesday morning, Tinakori Rd, Wellington

National Party candidate Stephen Franks’ campaign team has been systematically tearing down political posters put up by his opponents – despite Franks recently describing people defacing his election hoardings as “political thugs who don’t like free speech or opinions different from their own”.

The group Both Eyes Open – which has been distributing posters, banners and stickers around the country reminding the public of the National Party’s record – discovered that its posters were being removed every night throughout central Wellington. “Our members went out last night and this morning and discovered it was Stephen Franks’ campaign people tearing them down,” spokesperson Fergus Wheeler said. Photos of these people match photos of the campaign people who have been out holding banners and leafletting with Stephen Franks around the city.

“It seems a little hypocritical of Mr Franks to grandstand about freedom of speech for his own campaign advertisements and then let his team destroy other people’s ones,” Mr Wheeler said.

The posters they have been removing include one about Stephen Franks’ anti-human rights actions three years ago when he was an ACT MP. The “Don’t vote for prejudice” poster quotes his amendment to human rights legislation where he tried to make it lawful for employers and landlords to discriminate against people for being in an unmarried couple, for being gay, for “extra-marital child bearing” and for breaching “promises made in marriage”.

Just this morning we watched his campaign team removing these posters, and two others saying “Do you really want a SUB-PRIME MINISTER?” and “Privatised health, School fees up, Benefit Cuts, Toll roads — National, not the change we need.” In other words, we have been having a legitimate say about the issues that we believe are important in this election. This is exactly the freedom of speech that two weeks ago Stephen Franks was self-righteously defending.”

Our members spoke to Stephen Franks in the street this morning and he confirmed that his crew had been removing posters. He claimed that the “Don’t vote for prejudice” posters were defamatory but did not explain why this gave his a right to remove them. “As a lawyer, he knows the defamation is decided in court, not by removing other people’s freedom of speech,” Mr Wheeler said. “They’re not defamatory, we’re just reminding people of Mr Franks’ past actions which he would prefer liberal Wellington Central voters to forget.”