As a member of Crawley Labour party I am getting quite excited about our impending candidate selection.  Alerady I have had emails from two candidates, setting out the reasons why they think they are best for the job.  One of them also sent out the same letter by snail-mail, which must have cost a fortune, and the other has a website for the selection and has been phoning round members.I expect to get more of this over the next few days and look forward to it and it is good that there is so much active canvassing for votes – should make for a decent turnout at the selection meeting.  If there was just one standout candidate who was obviously miles better than the rest and was putting in a lot of effort while the rest just put their names on the list and sat back to wait for the vote it would make the decision a lot easier for us – but how much better to have a difficult decision instead.

I don’t think I need to spell out the parallels with the actual elections and speculate about whether low turnout is at least partially caused by the feeling that the result is a foregone conclusion or that nobody is really selling themselves enough do I?

The shame is that no party in the election can reach all the electorate in the way that our aspiring candidates can reach all party members.  With all parties having limited numbers of active members who are willing and able to knock on doors and make phone calls it will remain that way.

I think all activists have experienced the frustration of seeing how much effort goes in to canvassing just to reach a proportion of the voters – and then to be told later that we just don’t care by somebody who wasn’t contacted either because they are in a street we didn’t get round to, or because they were out when we called, or because their partner answered the door and said they weren’t interested, or whatever.

I don’t know who will win our selection, though I hope it will be close and on a high turnout.  If nothing else, that will show that poster campaigns, clever websites, facebook groups, leaflets and mass mailings may have their place, but that there is no substitute for actually going face-to-face or getting direct communication from somebody who you feel really wants your vote.