I am interested by this unanticipated objection to the fixed term election date in 2015.Basically, an elections advisor to the UN thinks it is a bad idea to have the next general election on May 7th 2015 because that date is already set for the elections of the Scottish parliament and Welsh national assembly. He reckons that the Scottish and Welsh elections would be overwhelmed by national issues.
Apparently this was a problem in 2007 when Scottish parliamentary and council elections were held on the same day and voters were confused by having votes in two elections based on different voting systems and 180,000 votes were lost due to ballot papers being spoiled.
It is a good point. I have seen how some people were confused when voting in European and local elections at the same time. In that case the local elections were postponed by a month just so they could be held on the same day. This year the general election was held on the same day as local elections and if it had been timed any differently there would have been all sorts of complaints about the cost of having two lots of elections within a month or two.
Actually I reckon that if the general election had gone to its last possible date, which I think was early June, there would have been calls to postpone council elections to that date, like they do when the European ones come along.
I wonder if there is a case to be made for making a positive effort to stagger elections even if it does cost more.
Where I live we find it to our advantage when local council elections are held the same day as a general or even European election, purely because the higher turnout in those elections gets reflected in the locals and seems to help Labour in council elections – but that just shows that holding them together impacts the result.
Here we have elections for the borough council, county council, UK parliament and European parliament – no parishes – so that is four different bodies, and four sets of elections, but only two different systems at the moment. Just out of interest, whereabouts in the UK would you have the most bodies to elect to, and where would you have the greatest number of different voting systems?
Not Sure of the top of my head but I would think it may be London,
General – First past the Post
Europe – PR
Mayoral – Contingent
Assembly – Additional Member
Borough – First Past the Post
Obviously for a three tier system you have as many tiers with County – Parish but the Mayoral election gives another type of election (If a Parish has one at all.)
Scotland
Sorry hit enter too soon.
Has all Unitaries I believe otherwise They would probably win.
Also meant to say “Off the top of my head”
I was wondering about London. Do any of the London Boroughs have directly elected mayors?
Maybe I should know, but directly elected mayors were invented after I moved from Lewisham to Crawley.
Also PR should be qualified – some areas have different forms of PR in different elections like STV, top-up lists and such things.
When I lived in Durham we had a parish precept on our council tax but I don’t recall ever voting for a parish councillor. Are they maybe formed in some other way? So you may need to add ‘other’ to the list….
Also, I do wish that elections wouldn’t come up in May/June with such regularity. So many young people (18-24 year olds) have other major concerns at that point in the year (A2 levels, Uni/College exams and the job hunting that follows) that I feel they don’t give voting the attention it deserves because they are, quite rightly, concentrating on their future lives.
If only one candidate stands, which is pretty common, they don’t hold an election.
Otherwise it’s FPTP.
I think many parish councils don’t get as many candidates as there are seats and so everybody gets on – with vacancies often being filled by co-opting.
I suspect that if they get more candidates there is one ballot paper with all the names and you pick the 10 or 12 or however many you prefer. I guess that counts as FPTP but not the way we normally think of it.
PCs are very non-political though. Many of the councillors may be members of parties but don’t stand as a candidate of their party – just as themselves.
The BNP take advantage of that by having members get elected, with nobody knowing they are BNP members, and they then get counted when they say they have so many 100s of councillors.
Those of us who have never lived in a parished area find it all a little bit confusing.
Fair enough. The only time I ever got to vote in a local election was when someone I knew stood as a Green candidate (back in the early 90s when this was still quite out there!). Once it had become a two horse race the tories did put up a candidate but the result was the same as ever. Maybe I\’m the only member of the Skuds team to live in safe Labour areas?
That might be true now, but remember that I did live in Lewisham for quite a while.