Polling Booth

You may have noticed Edulection has been quiet of late - unfortunately life gets in the way and as each post takes a lot of research and therefore time, it's hard to keep up the volume we really need to get enough topics covered.

That's where you come in. Time is running out until the election and there are many, many issues that desperately need covering here. To do this we need your help. A post can realistically be written in 5 or 6 hours - which can be spread over as long as you'd like. If you really want to learn about a particular issue and we don't have it here, consider writing for us. Whenever we write a post we learn so much more than what we post here. We are becoming really quite educated on many topics through doing our research and that means we will be voting in a more educated, balanced way.

Coming up, we can expect Labour to start releasing their policy and as time drags on that's likely to be quite an avalanche. Ideally we'd like to be posting daily in the last couple of weeks which means there is plenty of time for you to write an article. If you're interested please email us and let us know what you'd like to write about.

Coming up this week there is a forum on lesbian affairs being held by the Auckland Lesbian Business Association featuring representatives from Labour, National and the Greens. It's this Wednesday, 8 October at the Purple Bar on the corner of Pitt St and K Rd, Auckland. Doors open at 6 with the forum starting at 6.30pm sharp. For more info check out this page.

There will also be a debate at the Auckland University campus on Monday 13 October starting at 6pm and featuring Judith Tizard of Labour, Nikki Kaye of National, Aaron Galey-Young of United Future, Denise Roche of Greens and Oliver Woods of RAM. For more info check out the event's Facebook page.

Also please don't forget that Wednesday 8 October is the last day you can enrol to vote. If you haven't enrolled (or you're not sure if you are enrolled) just head over to the elections website and get yourself sorted out!

If you know of any upcoming events, please email us and let us know.

You'll notice that our regular EdulectionElection poll is up - once again we invite you to tell us who you plan to vote for. If you're reading this in RSS, please come visit the site and have your say.

With luck we'll have some posts this week. Again, please consider writing a post for us. We know you're probably busy but if you're here you probably care about the issues and there's a chance you care about educating people about them. Everyone has things that are especially important to them that they'd like to let others know about and I'm shamelessly begging for your help.

Finally if you have a question you'd like to put directly to Helen Clark or John Key then the video below explains exactly how you can do that.

Polling Booth

Another week has gone by and it's been quite exciting from Edulection's point of view. The election was called last week and our readership increased overnight quite dramatically which was fantastic to watch. This was clearly illustrated in our EdulectionElection poll which has four times the number of previous polls (not that that really says much but still, awesome to see).

Last week I asked where our right-leaning readers were. Well, you showed me. I've changed the poll question entirely this week. We'll ask the party vote question again next week but for now we're interested in knowing if you know who is running for your electorate seat and how much you know about them.

Our posts are still a little thin on the ground - we apologise for this - unfortunately sometimes life just gets in the way. If you have an issue you'd like to write about, please email us and let us know, we'd love to hear from you.

Below are the results from last week. The excellent thing about this poll is it looks much more like what I'd expect the final election results to look like this year which means we're reaching a balance of voters - rather than just attracting one type of person we're attracting a range which is great. For anyone new to EdulectionElection please be aware that this has absolutely no reference to how MMP actually works - we ignore the 5% thresh hold, the electorate seats and the Maori seats. This is just an interesting way of presenting our information.

There are also a few events you might be interested in happening over the next few weeks. We'll keep you up to date with any political events we hear about - if you want to give us a tip just email us and let us know.

On Thursday September 18 there is a conservation forum hosted by Forest and Bird in Wellington. For more info, check out the page here.

Also on Thursday September 18 there is a tertiary education debate hosted by the Auckland University Students Association in Auckland. You can check out the event's Facebook page here.

On Wednesday September 24 there is a debate surrounding public transport hosted by the Campaign for Better Public Transport in Auckland. For more info, check out the page here.

Polling Booth

First off - apologies for the lack of content last week. We try and update once every two days but other commitments mean this sometimes doesn't happen like we would hope. Each entry needs to be researched, referenced and edited and this takes time. Ideally we'd simply like more writers - you don't have to contribute regularly, if there's only one issue you'd like to cover than we'd happily take a single submission. Anyone wanting to write for Edulection in order to make sure the issues of the 2008 New Zealand General Election are covered can email us and say hi. We'd love to have you on board.

Last week Holly contributed her first post on Early Childhood Education with a promise to follow up with primary and secondary education in the near future. We've got another writer in the works and hopefully I'll finally get a piece up about Climate Change this week too.

The EdulectionElection went well this week with a higher-than-average respondent rate (but still hardly statistically significant). A new poll has been started so please vote and let us know who you plan to vote for. We use this poll to judge who's reading our stuff. We're a little worried about how many of our readers swing to the left - where are all the righties?

This week's poll certainly showed more diversity than the previous polls which was awesome too.

Polling Booth

Another week, more issues. Winston Peters is out of his ministerial position and has now lost much of his 'baubles of office'. Helen Clark seems to have made some serious political slips of late and, surprisingly, this even shows up in this week's EdulectionElection poll!

While in the first two weeks we have posted the EdulectionElection results, Labour has been fairly even with the Greens, this week it's kind of slipped to the Greens. Of course our tiny sample aside, it does show us which way our readers generally think. The graph is at the bottom of this post. Remember our poll is nowhere near representative, highly biased and doesn't even account for the MMP system but it's still cool to see who our readers support.

The poll has also been reset so if you've voted before, please vote again. If you're reading via RSS, come cast your vote and let us know. It's completely anonymous and just for fun.

This week Edulection welcomed our first outside-writer onboard - our resident sex-blogger, Curvaceous Dee who wrote a post on Civil Unions. If you'd like to write for Edulection please just drop us a line and tell us what you'd like to write about.

This week's outside link is from YouTube. You can watch the question time debate between Winston Peters and Rodney Hide from early last week. Good stuff, but be warned, it's over 30 minutes long.

Polling Booth

Once a week Edulection bring you a roundup on Edulection itself by revealing our poll results and advertising for writers.

Last week we were pretty thin on the ground for content. I apologise. Until now we've been working with just one writer but in the next few days I should be joined by two more. That doesn't mean we're still going to stop looking for writers. If you're interested in writing for Edulection (I'm sure there's a few who could contribute in their study breaks...) then please send us an email. The more people helping out the more issues can be covered.

So for the poll results... once again low numbers but our Parliament looks different. Usual banter applies - this is a guide - we want to know how our readers plan to cast their vote. This is a weekly poll, people can only vote once per week. At the end of the week I share the votes and show how many votes went to what parties using the parliament graphic. It does not take into account the electorial seats and we don't have a seperate Maori roll. What you see isn't entirely what parliament if only readers voted, but it's bloody interesting to see the kind of political leanings our readers have.

We don't judge we're just interested. We'd quite like it if once a week you voted in our little poll. It's on the main site so if you've got us in RSS (and that's great if you do) then jump over to http://www.edulection.co.nz and say hi to the Edulection site.

We've also found this website - http://www.election08.co.nz - they've got all the headlines, interviews and media coverage. It's worth checking them out.

Polling Booth

The first week of Edulection is over and therefore so is the first week of polling.

Each week Edulection is going to ask you a question - this week we're asking if you know how MMP works - cast your vote on the left.

Last week we asked you which party you're going to vote for. This is going to be a recurring question, we're going to ask every fortnight and every fortnight we'll show you how parliament would look if voted for by the readers of Edulection.

It's worth noting that, for convenience sake we've ignored the issue or electorate seats and just assumed that the votes translate across the board. Also it's a very small pool of votes.

Edulection is still looking for contributors - if you'd like to contribute to the project, email Edulection and let us know what you'd like to write about. Examples of topics we'd love covered are infrastructure, policing, tax cuts, Working for Families, the health system, ACC, tertiary education... the list is literally endless. Apart from individual topics, we'd love to hear from staunch supporters of political parties - we're keen to have features where people tell us why they support a particular party but obviously to work we need supporters of every party.