WSM: Is a vote for a small party wasted? | Jaundiced Eye

Johannesburg twice handed its mayoralty to a party that won less than 1% of the vote. With 547 parties and almost 137,000 candidates chasing 10,526 council seats on 4 November, Jaundiced Eye columnist William Saunderson-Meyer argued that most of those names were vanity projects or job-seekers, and that the big parties quietly benefited from the clutter. He told Alec Hogg why ActionSA's Herman Mashaba could end up a kingmaker but not a queenmaker in Joburg, how two party leaders reached powerful parliamentary posts on well under half a percent of the national vote, and why a cross next to a no-hoper might end up somewhere the voter never intended.