So, we asked some questions. And we hoped that candidates would get in touch with us. In previous years, we’d obtained a spreadsheet of every single candidate and emailed them, and frankly, working as a group, it was a bloody lot of work getting their answers back, trying to hunt them down, trying to make sure we didn’t miss out anyone. Last election we decided that we’d just advertise our questions through our channels and let those who were clued in to the Wellingtonista have an advantage, so we did that again this year. Maybe we could have done better, but we didn’t.

There was also talk within the ‘ista about our 25 word limit on candidates’ answers and whether or not we should still have that rule. Unhelpfully, that came after we’d asked the questions. So, as we did notoriously did to Kerry in 2010, we have upheld the limit that we specified (disclaimer – there may have been slight miscounting due to cats trying to climb on laps etc).

We also do not have any coverage of anything related to District Health Boards, because honestly, we don’t know much about it. If you do, we’d love to hear from you – maybe a guest post?

All that aside, we got three sets of answers, and they are all useful for the upcoming decision-making we need to do. We may editorialise, probably mostly over on Twitter, but for now, these answers are published straight up in alphabetical order.

Please vote. It’s important.