Can you help me critique my pitch letter?

As of 2011, New Zealand was ranked as the least corrupt country on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception index, with the United States listed at a mediocre-to-poor #24. What makes this tiny island nation so corruption free? Is the corruption of American politicians not due to who we elect, but how we elect them? Does mathematics have more of an impact on policy than money? And is it possible to vastly improve the quality of American government by instituting one simple change – a change which has been tried and tested abroad in New Zealand?


I hope you’ll be interested in Importing Democracy, a non-fiction book about the change New Zealand made to their electoral system in 1993, and the far-reaching effects it has had on political participation, discourse, and policy over two decades. It makes an argument that the proportional representation system that New Zealand adopted, MMP, has inhibited and prevented corruption, and that the same system could be used to inhibit corruption in the United States.


First, the book examines the problems which have directly resulted from the United States “First Past the Post” voting system involving single member districts, including the anomalous 2000 presidential election and the gerrymandering of Texas from a basic game-theory perspective. Then it examines New Zealand, where after a series of elections in which the party that won the popular vote failed to gain control of Parliament due to the “first past the post” system, as well as two successive unpopular governments of both major parties that supported the same policies despite popular opposition, popularity for electoral reform gained steam. Despite incredible opposition from New Zealand’s established political and business elite, which opposed the system, New Zealand’s people passed a referendum in 1993 which altered the electoral system to proportional representation.


Because of the “mathematics” of the new electoral system, it would be rare to see one political party in absolute control of the Parliament. As such, laws must be more rigorously debated before passage and more compromises must be made, increasing scrutiny and public awareness of laws.


Furthermore, the new system allowed for minority political parties to get into Parliament. Left-leaning voters unhappy with the center-left party could vote for a similar left-wing party, and the same for the right as well. As the vote is proportional, each lost vote results in a nearly direct and immediate impact into the composition of parliament. The possibility of minority parties “taking” seats from the two major parties have forced the two major parties to keep their promises and keep their own houses clean of corruption in order to maximize their potential seats in Parliament. This changes the choice of the voter from the “lesser of two evils” to one where they can maximize their own ability to promote the policies they favor.


The research was conducted primarily through first-hand interviews with current and former members of the New Zealand Government, including former Prime Ministers Jim Bolger, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, and Jenny Shipley, and includes interviews with political leaders Rodney Hide, Russel Norman, Nandor Tanczos, Peter Dunne, current Deputy Prime Minister Bill English, and journalists Russell Brown (“Media 7” on TVNZ 7) and Nicky Hager, (author of The Hollow Men). All of these interviews were conducted in front of a video camera, for use in a future documentary project (of the same name) on the same subject.


An early draft of the manuscript is available on request. I look forward to hearing from you.


Sincerely,


Brian Boyko

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