New Zealand continues to show leadership in providing its voters with fair representation and meaningful ballot choices. After a three-week postal voting campaign, on September 27th the city of Wellington (the nation's capital and its second largest city) announced that a majority voted to keep the choice voting method of proportional representation for city council elections and instant runoff voting for its mayoral elections. Proponents won based on such arguments as choice voting leading to the election of more women and young candidates to office.

The 5th largest city Dunedin also elects its leadership with choice voting and instant runoff voting, as do several smaller cities, and all the nation's health boards are elected by choice voting -- called "single transferable vote" in New Zealand. New Zealand in 1993 voted to change its parliamentary elections from U.S.-style winner-take-all voting to the mixed member method of proportional representation.

News releases on Sept. 8 and Sept. 18 by Wellington reformers
Wellington 2007 election results
New Zealand government page on choice voting
How New Zealand voted to adopt "MMP"